


by god still am

by ruffboi



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Jaskier | Dandelion, Cursed Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Torture, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, but for now i want to end it when it ends, but it won't be completely clear HOW happy, it won't be BAD and it WILL be happy, it's heavy on the hurt and relatively light on the comfort but, we'll see if I want to write anything after this that clears it up, which is ambiguous
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23951494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/ruffboi
Summary: Jaskier is in the next town down a random road, out of the town Roach had been stabled in at the bottom of the mountain, and his chest aches and aches andaches, the way it did before he met Geralt, the way it did every time they were apart. When they met it was arevelationhow well Geralt could fill that emptiness, and Jaskier stayed with him for twenty years. Twenty.Years. Despite the harsh words. Despite the way he sometimes heard Jaskier and looked as if he’d just eaten a lemon. Despite the fact that Jaskierknew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the witcher tolerated Jaskier because of someone he'd already fucking lost.or: Jaskier's got a curse he can't seem to get broken properly, and Geralt has to mourn a person who's standing right in front of him.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 721
Kudos: 1151





	1. could be, will be, still am

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [demand an encore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222920) by [Emamel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel). 
  * Inspired by [Juniper Berries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22826725) by [WingedQuill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill). 



> I don't have as much backlog as I'd planned to before posting, but dammit I'm too excited for this fic to wait! Many many thanks to the lovely jackironsides for his fantastic beta work, you're a gem among gems!
> 
> Many thanks to my lovely storyinmypocket for some of the Geralting towards the end and a lot of talking and prodding at the shape of the story. This story wouldn't exist as it is without them and they are wonderful.

Jaskier had, perhaps, been a bit too rash in storming down the mountain after the dragon hunt, effectively removing himself from Geralt’s life. Geralt from _his_ life. Whichever way you cut it, they aren’t going to be travelling together anymore and … and good riddance, frankly.

Jaskier spent two decades as a stand-in for someone else, and he had borne it for the love of Geralt, despite what little good sense he had. And in return he gets _told off_ for having the audacity to try to cheer Geralt up after what happened with that witch that left him in such a foul and hateful temper? Oh yes, how _dare_ he care about his friend – certainly that deserves sharp words about knowing when to shut up.

It was better than being alone, with the gaping ache in his chest that he'd felt _every time_ he was without Geralt. But he’s done. He’s _washed his hands_ of Geralt of _fucking_ Rivia, and he’s glad of it.

Except that he’s not. Not _really_. Jaskier is in the next town down a random road, out of the town Roach had been stabled in at the bottom of the mountain, and his chest aches and aches and _aches_ , the way it did before he met Geralt, the way it did every time they were apart. When they met it was a _revelation_ how well Geralt could fill that emptiness, and Jaskier stayed with him for twenty years. Twenty. _Years_. Despite the harsh words. Despite the way he sometimes heard Jaskier and looked as if he’d just eaten a lemon. Despite the fact that Jaskier _knew_ , beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the witcher tolerated Jaskier because of someone he'd already fucking lost. And then after Jaskier finally lost his patience with it and told Geralt as much, he had the _audacity_ to try to claim that he’d let Jaskier stay for his own sake.

Which was utter bullshit, and Jaskier knows it. He knew it then and he knows it now.

Which is why he is here, two weeks later, in this shit town, spending the last of his coin on another bottle of some sort of local liquor. It tastes like shit, but it gets you _completely_ drunk, which is a good state to be in for the shit songs he’s writing and will never perform.

_He says it’s you and always you_

_I say you never really saw me_

Jaskier hums a bit, tucked into a table in the far corner of the tavern after having been booed into ending his attempted performance, trying to fit the scrawled (nearly illegible) lyrics to some kind of melody, and takes another swig of the bottle next to his journal. “Nah, that’s shit,” he mutters to himself, and scribbles it out loosely.

Maybe it should be a song that blames himself. He’s the one that turned it into a goddamn argument, after all. Geralt had snapped at him _how_ many times over the two decades they'd known each other, and he’d never taken it personally, but _this_ time somehow was too much? Especially when Geralt was … already upset. He didn't catch everything that Yennefer and Geralt had argued about, but he'd caught enough to know part of it was that Geralt had tied her destiny to his. That revelation had _not_ gone over well, to put it mildly. And yet he still pushed, after Yennefer stormed off, then took it personally when Geralt didn’t respond well. Of _course_ Geralt didn’t respond well.

Honestly, Jaskier only has himself to blame for being alone, after all that.

It’s been two weeks. Two weeks he’s been drunk off his ass and written a complete load of maudlin, poorly composed, and frankly _idiotic_ shite. Just like he's been doing tonight. He passes out at the table eventually, face planted into his journal and liquor bottle emptied down to the dregs.

The tavern owner apparently thought it best to let him sleep it off, because it's not until morning that Jaskier's roughly shaken awake and told in no uncertain terms to get out, and that his bardic services won't be needed again. Jaskier doesn't blame him; doesn't make sense to keep a bard on hand if he only sings depressing songs, he supposes. 

He starts walking out of town, hoping he actually has all his things, and decides to take stock, even if he's still a bit wobbly. He has his lute, his bedroll, a silver dagger Geralt gave him once "for emergencies", and his bag that mostly just has a change of clothes that probably needs washing pretty badly. A quick subtle smell test (which frankly, Jaskier realizes didn't _need_ to be subtle, as there's no one on the road with him anymore, but old habits etc.) verifies that he does _absolutely_ need a bath before he does anything else.

Right.

Geralt is gone. Jaskier has left Geralt's company. Geralt and Jaskier are no longer ... whatever they were. Friends? It seems shallow to call them friends, but they weren't anything _closer_. And maybe the leaving was his choice, and a fair one given everything, but the tipping point was his own fault. Geralt was angry, and upset, and Jaskier knows probably better than anyone how much Geralt _doesn't_ know how to handle strong emotions. Maybe Jaskier shouldn't have left. But he did leave.

They're done.

Geralt is gone.

Jaskier is alone.

It's an awful feeling, being alone, but Jaskier spent twenty years imperfectly filling a role someone else had filled before Geralt ever met him. Trying to fill a hole in Geralt's heart the way Geralt filled a hole in his. The problem is the shape of them: Jaskier's loneliness is broad and overwhelming and he's dealt with it as long as he can remember. Geralt's is shaped like a specific person.

And Jaskier is forty-two. He's too old to trail after a man with no interest in him like a lost puppy. He's too old to keep trying to wedge himself into a place he doesn't fit, just so he won't feel lonely. He's too old to sit around for weeks crying over a broken heart he saw coming almost two decades ago; too old to be drinking himself to oblivion, and playing nothing but heartbreaking songs. He has the rest of his life to live.

So, metaphorically at any rate, he picks himself out of the dirt, dusts himself off, and keeps moving. He's still living, even if the life he'd built is in ruins, so now all he can do is rebuild it.

The next town he reaches, he puts on a smile, even if it's forced, and manages to negotiate a bath, a room, and some laundering in return for playing for a few nights. He sends, frankly, every stitch of clothing he has to be washed, and _gratefully_ accepts his bath. Washing off the sweat and stink and dirt that he's been carrying with him since the dragon hunt, stale ale and misery, is a blessing he didn't know he needed. Honestly by the time he's done and redressed (in ill-fitting trousers and shirt borrowed from the innkeeper for a ducat until his own clothes are clean and dry), he feels more like himself than he has since they took the dragon hunt job in the first place. He's still _sad_ , of course. He's still nursing a broken heart that was two decades in the making, But he wants to sing, and he wants people to cheer for him and toss coins in his lute case, he wants to _perform_.

So he goes downstairs, and he does.

And it's ... well, it's not _good_ , not exactly, he feels raw and bruised and so desperately lonely, but it's _satisfying_. His hands ache and his smile had been forced for at least half the night, but when he collapses in the small bed, he sleeps soundly for the first time since he walked away.

Once he's played his agreed-upon nights, he thanks the innkeeper, is thanked in return, and leaves town for the next one down the road, heading south. Once he's alone on the road, it's nice. Quiet, but there's birdsong in the air and the sound of a stream not far from the road. As recently as a month ago he would've been singing as he walked, humming at least, but that's still a bit beyond him, he supposes. Instead, he walks in silence. When he camps for the night, he doesn't play his lute either, but that's normal when he's not with Geralt – he doesn't want to attract attention in the night if he's alone. 

It's two more towns before he actually finds himself wanting to sing on the road, and he stops walking and stands in the empty road near the forest so he can belt out some bawdy drinking song at the top of his lungs, like he was still barely twenty, and actually laughs at himself when he finishes.

His heart's still raw and broken, but he'll mend well enough in the end, he thinks. And when he runs into Geralt again (he _always_ runs into Geralt again, even if he's not trying to, as surely as if destiny were twined around them too), he can apologize for his part in the argument, wish him well, and walk away.

It's better if he doesn't spend the rest of his life competing with a ghost, anyway.

* * *

He plays, he travels, and he heals. A year passes, and Jaskier's shocked, honestly, that he hasn't run into Geralt yet. He's rarely gone more than a season without running into him before. Maybe it's because he's avoiding places Geralt might be, or Geralt's avoiding places _he_ might be. Or maybe they'd made their own destiny for a while, whirling around each other, and Jaskier leaving was enough to free them of it.

Whatever it is, Jaskier _thinks_ he's grateful. The less his heart feels like it's in shreds, the more he worries that if he met Geralt again, he'd reach out desperately to fill that hole that's never ached even a modicum less with time. He knows he deserves better than being nothing more than a replacement. He knows it would destroy him utterly to go back to travelling with Geralt, and honestly he doesn't think it would do Geralt much good, either, in the long run. But he worries he wouldn't remember that if actually faced with the man, so he's grateful for the lack of him.

He writes new songs, sings them, transcribes some of them, with others from further back in his repertoire, in a batch for the academy printer the one time he stops through Oxenfurt. They offer him a professorship, to his shock and surprise, and he almost takes it. He's not getting any younger; sleeping on the road isn't as easy as it used to be, he's had small streaks of grey growing in his hair for a few years already (vainly dyed dark while he traveled with Geralt, left to grow out now), and this is the time in a musician and academic's life when he should be shifting away from childish things like travelling for adventure. But he thinks about being in one place, teaching, pretending he's in one piece when he isn't quite yet, and if he's honest with himself, he sees that path ending with him at his desk with an empty bottle of vodka, and that's not ... what he wants. He thinks. Probably.

So he leaves again, giving up the possibility of a well-paid, permanent position that would come with easy access to baths and a soft mattress and plenty of people to discuss music with in favor of sleeping on the ground and in shitty inns that smell like old ale and piss, and playing to variably appreciative audiences. Which sounds like the worst trade, but he knows what he's like. The bedrolls and smelly inns are a sight better than drinking himself to death in a room in Oxenfurt while he pretends to enjoy teaching more than running from everything to the next town and the next.

It's been almost two years since leaving Geralt when he runs into the mage in Temeria.

He's played quiet inns and taverns before, and the key to those is generally to work at various familiar and relatively low-key songs until the audience responds, and work from there. But in this town, they seem to not _want_ to engage, and he only plays for about an hour before he gives up, and asks for a meal and some ale.

"I wish you'd played longer," a man says, sitting down across from Jaskier. "You have a beautiful voice."

Jaskier glanced up at him, and considered what might be happening. The man was a bit older than him by all accounts, greying black hair and moderately attractive; his clothes weren't fancy silks or anything, but they looked finely woven and well fitted. And there was something about his _eyes_ that set Jaskier on edge.

"Mmm," he said, something clenching nervously in his stomach. "No offence," he says lightly, with effort, "but I have a policy not to fuck mages. Professional courtesy and personal preference. You understand."

"I'm a bit disappointed on principle," the man says, with a hesitant smile. "But no, that's not why I wished to speak to you, Jaskier." 

Jaskier is almost more terrified by that than by the compliment. "I don't know where Geralt of Rivia is, either," he says, trying not to let any panic into his voice and failing miserably. "Haven't seen him in years, actually."

"My name is Doran," the man says gently. "I _am_ a mage, though I'm mostly removed from the politics of the Brotherhood. And I'm not here to hurt you or ply you for information."

" _Really_?" Jaskier asks, dubious and still rather terrified, if he's being honest. "Not to be rude, but given my experience with magical personages, that seems _highly_ unlikely."

Doran doesn't seem phased, though, and just leans forward. "You've a curse on you, bard. It seems rather nasty, and I ... wanted to make sure you knew, I suppose."

Well. _That_ certainly got Jaskier's attention quickly, and he freezes for a moment, his heart clenched. "A _curse_?"

"A curse," Doran verifies, nodding. "A strong one, too, as far as I can tell. Did you anger a wizard recently?"

Jaskier's pretty sure he hasn't, but he wracks his brain anyway, thinking back and trying to think of any magic users other than Yennefer that he might've pissed off enough to have a _strong curse_ on him that he somehow doesn't know about.

"I ... mildly irritated a sorceress nearly two years ago," he offers. "But I'm relatively certain she was _much_ angrier at someone else. We have history, the irritation was mutual. Actually, I was off my game; I was probably more irritated than she was." He's starting to get jittery, turning moments over in his mind, turning _himself_ over in his mind. 

"I doubt that would've been the source then, even for a touchy mage," Doran says thoughtfully. "Casting this curse would've taken a fair amount of effort." Jaskier's food and drink arrive, and he stares blankly down at his stew, his stomach souring. No, definitely not in the mood to eat anymore, and he pushes the bowl to the side.

Jaskier is not fully willing to believe Doran's claims. Or, well, not willing to let _Doran_ know yet that he believes his claims. He doesn't feel like it's likely some mage who's spending time in rural Temeria would be lying to a random bard about having a curse on him. Especially since he could just say 'okay, thanks for the information' and _leave_. If it was a ploy to hurt him or Geralt or anything like that, it was an _extremely poor_ one. Which makes Jaskier pretty certain that Doran's on the level.

And frankly, Jaskier would rather believe him than ignore him, if there really _is_ a curse on him. He does _not want_ to be cursed. He grabs the mug of ale and takes a long drink.

"Say I believe you," Jaskier begins, putting down his mug. "I don't _feel_ cursed. Is it waiting to take effect at some later date or something?"

"I don't know," Doran admits. "I only noticed it because you had ... magic on you. It startled me, I wasn't expecting to run into anything magical in a place like this." A beat, then he adds quickly, "Ah, it was your lute, by the way. What I initially sensed; the curse I only noticed because I had opened myself more to magical senses."

"My _lute_?" Jaskier blurts out immediately, confused, before realizing the likely reason and waving Doran off. "Wait, no, I probably know why. Got it from the king of the elves nearly twenty-five years ago."

"That would probably be the reason," Doran admits, a faintly amused smile on his lips. "Likely small enchantments to protect it, keep it in tune, sweeten the tone." His smile drops, and Jaskier's brief moment of distraction fades. Right. Curse. "I can probably get more of a sense of what the curse is with a closer look," Doran continues, "but honestly, it would probably better be done in privacy, and where I have access to my supplies. I'd understand if you don't trust me enough to leave with me and let me do magical assessments on you, but I _am_ willing."

"I don't really have enough money to pay you," Jaskier says, because he'd like to know what the fuck he's gotten himself into and when he can expect things to go to hell, at the very least.

Doran shakes his head. "I've plenty of money from other endeavors," he says. "And, admittedly, I'm interested to see what kind of curse this strong someone would want to put on a _bard_ , of all people."

"To be fair," Jaskier says dryly, "I _did_ somewhat make a name for myself travelling with and singing the praises of the continent's most notorious witcher for two decades."

Doran chuckles, and Jaskier thinks absently that if they'd met under different circumstances, he would probably be tempted to break his self-imposed 'no fucking mages' rule. "All right, there is that. Still, the offer is on the table, if you haven't anyone else to reach out to."

He could try to find Yennefer. She might even actually talk to him if he says that he left Geralt for fucking him over, too. They weren't friends but as far as he knows she never _hated_ him. Or she might just ... ignore him. And that's assuming he could _find_ her. And even if he wanted to see Geralt, he doubts the witcher would be able to tell more than he was cursed, _if_ that. Probably he couldn't, because otherwise he'd've said something before the last time they saw each other. Jaskier has to assume he was cursed before then, because he hasn't had anything happen _since_ that he thinks would've led to getting cursed.

"I don't really," he says with a sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. "And I'm not especially comfortable with the idea of wandering around with an unknown curse on me."

Doran grimaces sympathetically and stands. "Come on, it's not too late. I should be able to do this in a couple of hours at most, depending on the complexity." 

Jaskier hesitates, remembering for a moment that he's about to go to an unknown mage's home, alone, and allow the mage to cast magic on him. And that Geralt isn't here to rescue him if it goes horribly wrong. 

Doran frowns slightly. "Jaskier?"

"Right, sorry," he says quickly, and stands as he picks his lute case up from where it was propped next to him. "I should put this up in my room, if that's all right?" 

Doran nods his agreement, and Jaskier heads upstairs to stash his lute safely in his locked room. He pauses before going back downstairs, rests his forehead against the door, and takes a moment to breathe.

He's cursed, with a powerful and unknown curse, that could take effect at any moment, that he'd received at some unknown point in time, and if anything happens to him, Geralt will almost certainly never find out. Jaskier can't even be melodramatic and leave a letter for Geralt, because there isn't anywhere to _send_ it. And it doesn't escape his notice that even now, with the spectre of something awful hanging over him, two years after he'd walked away, the only person he can think of is _Geralt_.

" _Fuck_ ," he whispers into the empty room. "Geralt, I swear to Melitele if this kills me, you'd _better_ find out and grieve me like you were grieving your damn ghost for twenty years."

Then he takes a deep breath, straightens his back, and exits the room.

* * *

Doran's home is slightly outside of town, and rather nice. He's clearly working as an herbalist or healer, judging by the garden and the interior both being filled with various useful herbs and flowers. 

"Right, sit there," Doran says brusquely, pointing to a cot pushed to the wall near one of his shelves of herbs. Jaskier isn't bothered by the shift in presence, and actually smiles a little – Doran's in his workspace and is smoothly pulling together ingredients for ... well, something, and acting very much like every professional healer Jaskier's known throughout his life. And he spent a good chunk of his fifteenth year sick with some lingering fever, so he was _very_ familiar with healers. And frankly that more than anything else is what reassures Jaskier.

He doesn't think anyone much like a healer would want to fuck him over at this point in his life.

So Jaskier sits on the cot and folds his hands in his lap to keep himself from fidgeting absently with any of the bottles or dried herbs within reach, like he would when he was six and fifteen and twenty-seven and now forty-four, and he waits.

"I'm making a tea that helps keep my magic focused," Doran says as he uses a small bit of magic to heat the water and herbal mixture he'd made. "Not something I need assistance with, generally speaking, but it will lessen the effort it takes to do, so I can focus my efforts on finding the shape of your curse and how to unwind it."

"That's fair," Jaskier says, jiggling his leg. Now that they were here and talking about magic and curses again, the calm he'd felt from the familiar movements and attitude has melted away entirely, like a chunk of snow on a burning log. "I can't imagine it's particularly easy. Seeing as how it's made of chaos and everything. Does that mean it's against its nature to be focused? I rather imagine it's a bit like my mind most days." He's trailed off into talking to himself, but Doran's standing in front of him holding an empty cup and smiling faintly. 

"I don't doubt it's similar, you seem to be rather chaotic yourself," Doran says, and puts the cup down, pulling a stool over so they're sitting facing each other. "Now, this shouldn't hurt, or feel like much of anything. I'm just looking for the magic of the curse, to try to see when it will activate and what it will do. All right?"

Jaskier lets out an anxious breath and squeezes his hands together tighter, then nods jerkily. It will be fine. And if it isn't, _then_ he'll consider trying to find Yennefer. Doran reaches out and puts his fingers on either side of Jaskier's head. 

And nothing happens. Or, at least, nothing happens from _Jaskier's_ point of view. He can feel this ... flutter, almost, at the edge of his thoughts, that he's pretty sure must be Doran's magic, but other than that it's rather uneventful and anticlimactic. So he keeps still for a few excruciatingly long minutes before Doran opens his eyes and lowers his hands, looking solemn.

"Well, that can't be good," Jaskier says, trying weakly for levity and not managing it.

"It's some sort of transformation curse," Doran explains, sitting back on the stool for a moment. Jaskier's fingers flutter against the backs of his hands as he keeps them folded in his lap. "A very strong one. And it was set in place long enough ago that I can't see any part of you that isn't touched by it."

Jaskier's fidgeting stills, and his eyes narrow. "Wait. You mean it's a curse that's been waiting to take effect since I was a child?" 

"It's a curse that's already _taken_ effect since you were a child, by all appearances," Doran corrects. "Whatever the transformation is, you've been living it since before you can remember."

Well. That was more upsetting and complicated than he'd expected.

"The fuck," Jaskier says with great feeling, "does that even mean."

"Honestly, I don't know," Doran admits. "But I'm confident I can remove it, if you'd like."

Jaskier unfolds his hands and wipes his damp palms against his pants. "Can I ... I need some air, for a moment, if you don't mind?" Doran stood and stepped back and Jaskier didn't even bother for a response before he's on his feet and out the door, breathing hard.

He stumbles a few steps away from the door and bends over, hands on his knees, breathing deeply. Faintly he can hear the door close, and a small part of him is grateful that Doran is, if nothing else, polite enough to give him a moment of privacy to try to deal with this.

" _Fuck_!" he doesn't _quite_ shout, and pushes himself upright, still trying to breathe evenly, so he can pace. "Fuck. Shitting _tits_ , I ..." Okay. He needs to not just curse. He needs to think this out, the best way he's ever known how.

"Right, Geralt," he says to no one, to the memory of his best friend for two decades who could barely stand him most of the time. "It _seems_ that I've run into a bigger spot of bother than I thought, and I've been cursed since infancy. A transformation curse, no less, and no idea how it's changed me!"

 _Hmm,_ says the voice in the back of his mind, that he's so glad isn't here and wishes were here so badly he _aches_. It's thoughtful and concerned and definitely paying actual attention, rather than grunting assent while not hearing a word he says. Jaskier can— _could_ tell the difference. Can imagine it.

"I suppose it could be something lovely," he says. "Secret heir to a throne somewhere. Or it could be worse, it's probably worse. Probably had some sort of horrible deformity and my parents were so mortified they cursed me to make me look normal enough for their perfectionistic standards." Maybe it's childish to let that much bitterness seep out in his tone, even if he's not talking to anyone but himself.

 _Could be,_ his imaginary Geralt says in this imaginary conversation he's having, and Melitele's _tits_ , he can't even have an _imaginary_ Geralt that is more conversational? But no, he can't, because he knows Geralt too damn well for a chattier Geralt to feel at all realistic. Damn the man.

"Whatever it is, it will change the way I _exist_ ," Jaskier continues, to the night air and a memory. "If it's from before I can _remember_ , then it's ..." his frantic pacing slows to a stop and his heart stutters. "What if I can't play anymore, Geralt?" he whispers. "What if I can't _sing_?"

His imaginary Geralt is silent.

But his own mind is not, it never ever is. If he can't play and he can't sing and he has more of his heart torn out of him ... he will find a way to dust himself off and keep moving. He always has. He always will. If he stops, he'll drown himself, or find a dangerous lover, or try to help someone he has no business helping. And then he'll burn out the way part of him has been trying to do since he left Oxenfurt that first time at eighteen.

He's Julian Pankratz. He's _Jaskier_ , the greatest bard the continent's ever known. He will survive and thrive after whatever this curse can throw at him.

"Right," he says, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Okay."

He goes back inside with squared shoulders and a tight jaw, his thumb rubbing against his finger. Doran is sitting at his table, writing in some sort of journal, a collection of candles on the table near him, and he looks up when Jaskier comes back in.

"I want it gone," Jaskier says firmly, trying to ignore how fast his heart is racing. "Whatever it is. I want it gone."

Doran nods. "All right. Go lie down on the cot and we'll begin." 

Jaskier shrugs out of his doublet, assuming that if he needs to lay down, it'll probably be easier to not be wearing it, and after a moment of consideration he toes his boots off as well, moving them out of the way and placing his folded doublet on top of them. By the time he's laid down, Doran has drawn a sigil on the wooden floor in chalk, and is lighting candles around it. Jaskier shivers, remembering the first time he met Yennefer, and while he's not _that_ scared of her anymore, that was not exactly the best day of his life. Hopefully this will end as smoothly as that did. Well, the curse-lifting part. He'd prefer there be no buildings collapsing or anything after this.

"Everything's prepared," Doran's voice stirs Jaskier from his nervous thoughts. "This may not be pleasant," he warns. "Depending on what has changed and how much the curse fights me, it may be painful. Are you ready?"

 _No_ , Jaskier thinks, and tries to pretend he's not trembling. "Yes," he says, relieved there's not a waver in his voice. 

Doran smiles reassuringly, then closes his eyes and stretches out his hands, hovering them over Jaskier's head and chest. He starts murmuring in Elder, words Jaskier can't quite make out or translate, and for a long moment, nothing happens.

Then, without warning, Jaskier's body explodes into a nova of pain, a scream ripped from his throat so violently he swears he can taste bile and blood in his mouth. There's fire under his skin, licking under it and over it, and it's so intense that he can hardly feel the sharp flames in his hands, his ribs, his face. He spasms, nearly off the cot, still screaming, unable to hear Doran over the rushing in his ears, and the worst part through all of it is that it feels like his _mind_ is being ripped apart as well, flayed open and apart and there's something ... something ... something is missing. If he can just reach out, though, maybe ...

The pain doesn't stop. His screams don't stop.

At some point, though he doesn't know how long it's been since it all started, Jaskier's too overwhelmed by it all, and the screams stop as his awareness fades to blessed nothingness.


	2. i wake and hear you calling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What has Geralt been up to?" you ask?
> 
> Well I'll tell you.

Geralt doesn't like Posada.

It's always a risk, coming to the small border towns on the edge of the world. Sometimes, there's a fair amount of work because of creatures coming down from the mountains. Other times, there's next to nothing, because the mountains are hostile and don't provide a lot of rich opportunities; maybe a witcher came through here three years ago and nothing's come back yet. It's generally not a place Geralt wants to be.

But contracts have been few and far between recently, so he's come to the edge of the world, come to this tiny tavern in Posada to see if he finds any rumors or desperate people. He's just settling in with an ale when the bard comes downstairs and starts playing.

Normally, he doesn't pay attention to bards. They're annoying, they're usually not particularly good, and – at least over the last couple of years – they remind him of someone he doesn't have anymore. He's braced for the same reaction he always has, muted irritation with an undercurrent of grief, when this one starts singing and—Geralt freezes, eyes on the table in front of him, hands clutched rictus-like around his mug. 

The bard sounds like Jaskier.

It isn't exact. There's a carelessness to the way the bard's voice jumps about that is unlike Jaskier, but still ... the similarities are there, and they make Geralt's bones creak from things withheld. He can wait out the performance. It's still early, someone might still come to him with a contract, and he's literally down to his last ducat. He can wait it out. He _will_ wait it out.

The bard gets shouted down after a few songs, and Geralt can't bring himself to be disappointed, even for the boy's sake. The similarity, however unintentional, to Jaskier's voice is making him want to put his fist through the wall. Jaskier is gone, and Geralt is _trying_ to get on with his life. Without that singing, he can work on looking slightly less intimidating, so people might actually approach him.

Suddenly there's a waft of a scent that makes him tense up, and he's not immediately sure why. It's almost familiar, something he should know, but he can't quite place it; he doesn't want to look up, because whichever man is approaching is clearly not here to offer him a contract, judging by the faint scent of arousal around him.

"I love the way you just ... sit in the corner and _brood_ ," the man – no, the _bard_ – says, and Geralt's heart turns to ice as he realizes what that scent is. He didn't recognize it without the tang of arsenic that always seemed to be part of it, or the mutagens under that, but between the voice and the scent, it's unmistakable. Unmistakable and impossible.

 _Jaskier_.

He turns his head only just enough to see the shape of the man who absolutely can't be and absolutely _is_ Jaskier leaning against a wooden support post, wearing something light and colorful and fragile, something absolutely nothing like witcher blacks.

"I came to drink alone," he manages to grit out, turning his head away. Whatever this is, it's false. He's imagining things. Maybe he's somehow forgotten how Jaskier smelled and sounded over the last couple of years. He'll look up, and it won't truly be Jaskier, and it will break him. So he'll just ignore this bard until he goes away, and Geralt will be fine.

Except the bard keeps talking. Geralt can't really process the words because he's trying so hard to tune them out, trying to make them sound less like the person it can't be, trying to focus on the smell of sweat and ichor on his own armor and not the almost-familiar scent circling around him. The bard stops in front of the table, opposite Geralt, and he can't help the instinctive turning of his head in the bard's direction, stopping his eyes at the bard's chest, and he can see delicate hands gesturing and fiddling with a cup in such familiar ways that Geralt thinks he might be sick.

"Come _on_ ," the bard says, and his light cajoling tone is so fucking familiar that Geralt can't help himself. He swallows hard against the disappointment he knows he's about to feel, and lets his eyes flick up to the bard's face.

Jaskier's bright blue eyes stare back at him.

The bard asks a question, and Geralt responds without thinking as his eyes flicker across the boy's features. Eyes: familiar blue, missing the gold that should be shot through them. Mouth: familiar curve, but smiling with too much bravado and not enough confidence. Hands: familiar shapes and delicacy, but scarless and making gestures that are somehow subtly _wrong_ . It can't actually be Jaskier, because this bard is missing things that were integral to the shape of Jaskier. It must be a fluke, a relative, _anything_ to explain how the fuck this _bard_ can be standing in front of him without it meaning something Geralt's heart can't handle.

"Oh, _fun_ ," the bard says, and those eyes light with realization and mischief as he sits at the table, oddly fearless in the face of what he's certainly just realized. "White hair, big old loner, two very … _very_ scary-looking swords. I know who _you_ are." 

There's no _real_ recognition, no familiarity, and Geralt can't _stand_ it. He pushes himself to his feet abruptly, grabbing his swords and all but shoving past this idiot human who has the fucking gall to look like a person he's not. 

"You're the witcher, Geralt of Rivia!"

Geralt can't be here anymore. He'll take Roach and find somewhere else to get work, and Posada can sink into the depths for all he cares.

But then there's a job, dropped into his hands by a desperate farmer, reminding him of his currently empty coin purse.

And ... well. He _is_ a witcher.

* * *

The bard-who-is- _not_ -Jaskier follows him. 

Not immediately, but Geralt and Roach are barely down the road out of town when he hears the sound of running footsteps behind them, and he knows who it is before he can even smell him.

"Ah," the bard pants, falling into step just a bit behind Geralt, and that's two more things to add to the list: Jaskier could run fast and silent, and never walked behind Geralt.

_"Why do you do that," Geralt asked as Jaskier turned, for what seemed like the thousandth time, to walk backwards while making some absent comment, like he always seemed to._

_Jaskier's grin was sharp and bright. "Because I like to look at you," he said with a wink, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, then turned back to the road before adding, "Besides, Pup, I know you'll tell me if I'm about to back into anything I'll regret."_

_"Hm," Geralt said, but he smiled despite himself._

"Need a hand?" the bard asks, hopeful. "I've got two. One for—"

"Go. Away," Geralt snaps, not stopping, or looking back. "Or at least shut up."

"Right," the bard responds immediately. "I promise I won't be but _silent_ backup."

Geralt growls his disbelief, jaw twitching as he stalks forward with Roach's reins clutched like a lifeline in one gloved hand. ( _As if Jaskier was ever truly silent unless he was hunting_ , his mind supplies traitorously.) If he sets a hard enough pace, perhaps this soft, pampered annoyance will fall behind and leave him alone. He can hope.

"Only it's just," comes that familiar-unfamiliar voice scant seconds later, and he curses internally. Jaskier would know the difference. When to speak, when to simply be present. But that's the point, isn't it? This _isn't_ Jaskier. "You were right, and _real_ adventures would probably make for better stories." 

The bard has apparently started to recover a bit from catching up, because his breathing's less heavy and he's trotting forward to pull even with Geralt despite the pace he's set. 

"You, sir, smell _chock full_ of them. Amongst other things. I mean, what _is_ that? Is that _onion_? It doesn’t matter. _Whatever_ it is, you smell of death and destiny. Heroics and heartbreak!"

"It's onion," Geralt responds immediately, and falters a little. It's the sort of thing he'd've said before, to make Jaskier bark out his bright, brief laugh – so easy to draw out, but Geralt still did his best to draw it out as often as he could.

There's no laugh from _this_ boy. Just an uncertain, "Right, yeah. Yeah." Even if it was meant to be a joke, perhaps Geralt's reticence has been enough to drive him off, but no, he's still pushing forward, all nervous chatter and bravado. 

"Ooo, I could be your barker!" he continues, his excitement growing again. "Spreading the tales of Geralt of Rivia, the—the _Butcher_ of Blaviken!"

Geralt stops in his tracks, his chest burning and blood rushing to his ears to hear _that_ name from _that_ voice. He can't tell if it's rage or the last piece of his heart shattering. "Come here," he growls to the bard-who-is- _clearly_ -not-Jaskier, and the idiot steps closer without question, a guileless curiosity in his eyes and expression. 

It makes Geralt want to scream. 

Instead, he punches the bard in the stomach.

* * *

Geralt wakes up in a cave, bound with ropes, and the warmth of another person at his back, bound to him. The bard, of course, the _fucking_ bard who isn't Jaskier and pissed him off and got them _caught_. Geralt thinks at first that the bard is still unconscious, because there's no scent of fear in the air, but the bard's breathing isn't steady enough for that. Geralt doesn't have time to wonder why he's not afraid.

They— _he_ has to get out of here, though, before the elves he smells on the air come back, so Geralt starts struggling against the ropes, frustrated by their strength and the skill of the knots.

"This is the part," the bard says, almost sounding exasperated, "where we _escape_." Geralt would punch him again, if his hands were free, and he can hear people approaching the mouth of the cave.

"This is the part where they _kill us_ ," Geralt snarls back, and ah, _there's_ the scent of the fear this idiot should've been feeling when he woke up bound in a cave after being knocked unconscious.

"Who's they?" the bard asked, his voice not quite steady, and despite himself Geralt feels a twist of concern that shifts to anger when the elven woman strides in ahead of another elf and the sylvan and, he guesses from how the hit transfers through the bard to him, kicks the bard hard in the chest.

"Elves," he answers through gritted teeth, even if the answer isn't needed anymore. Why the fuck are they attacking the bard when the one who'd attacked the sylvan or even had _weapons_ was Geralt?

"Oi, that's my _lute_ , give it back!" there's panic in the bard's voice (something completely unfamiliar, finally), and Geralt can't help but think of how carefully Jaskier always handled his lute, nicked and worn from previous owners and travel as it was. 

(He can't help but think that this lute is a different one, better tuned, with no warped wood, and that fact bothers him for reasons he won't let himself accept yet.) 

"Geralt, do your—your _witchering_!"

"Shut up," he growls, in the hope he can get the chatty bastard to stay quiet, let Geralt take the brunt of the elves' attention.

"No," the bard protests immediately, to Geralt's disappointment.

" _You shut up,_ " the elven woman snaps in Elder at both of them. Geralt wills the boy to listen.

"My Elder speech is rough," the damnable idiot says, anger and fear mingling in his voice. "I only got part of that."

"Humans. Shut. Up," the woman hisses.

" _Ah, got it, thanks so much,_ " he shoots back in Elder himself. 

Geralt grimaces and rolls his eyes – mouthing off will _not_ help them.

"Do you want to die now?" the elf asks, her voice cold and sharp.

"As opposed to later?" Geralt growls, in a completely instinctive bid to get her attention. Geralt doesn't want the bard near him, doesn't want to hear him prattle or play or watch him move in entirely the wrong ways, but he can't see him die. Not here. Not like this. Not with Geralt right there and unable to help.

The other elf is strumming the bard's lute roughly, and Geralt hears him cry out, "No, please, not the lu—" and then the woman's boot connects to the bard's chest again and there's a spike of pain rising on his scent as he breathes shallow and ragged. He's human. He's _fragile_. And Geralt is _angry_.

" _Leave off!_ " he shouts, his voice raw with it. "He's just a _bard_!"

And that's the rub, isn't it? He's just a bard. Just a human. Fragile and ignorant and stupidly fearless. He's not Jaskier, because Jaskier was strong and capable and vicious when he needed to be. Jaskier was hard so Geralt could be soft in a way he's forgotten how to be. The bard is not Jaskier.

And, probably most importantly, the thought that Geralt could not bring himself to think until this moment, that consumes everything he is as he barely feels the elf woman punching him and clearly hears the bard's lute shattering and the wordless pained sound the bard lets out when it happens ...

Most importantly, the bard is not Jaskier _anymore_.

* * *

They survive, somehow. He speaks to Filavandrel and he pleads for the bard's release, and he appeals to the king's desire to save his people, to have a home again, and he protests their categorizing him as human.

" _One_ human," he said, and it felt like his heart cracked open to say it, because by all rights there should've been no humans bound there, only a witcher and a dead man.

But he got through. Somehow, despite every imperfect imitation he made of Jaskier's skilled diplomacy and cajoling, he actually _got them out_ and they're free. He gave Filavandrel his payment for the job, and Filavandrel gave the bard his lute, elven make and likely lightly enchanted, and they agreed not to say a word to the people of Posada about the true fate of the elves in the mountains.

The bard's rambling on about something. Geralt thinks he responds, but honestly he's not sure, and it doesn't matter in the end because the bard's wandering ahead and singing, faster than Roach's easy ambling pace. He's trying to convince himself that it's not true. This bard is just some ... eerily similar distant cousin. A nephew. Anything but actually _Jaskier_ , because if it is Jaskier, then that's the last shred of hope he was holding on to up in smoke.

He frowns as the bard's song trickles into his consciousness, talking about ... an army of elves serving a devious devil? 

"That's not what happened," he says on instinct, pulling Roach's reins to bring her to a stop and frowning in confusion. "Where's your newfound respect?" 

The bard turns his back to the road to face Geralt as he speaks, and Geralt's heart stutters. 

The boy smiles, but it's wry and sad, and there's something older than Geralt himself in that smile. "Respect doesn't make history," he says, and he sounds both mournful and resigned, and Geralt doesn't move, even after the bard turns away to continue down the road, singing as he goes.

That smile, that _sentiment_ , is like cutting out his heart and grinding it under an inappropriately fancy heel. Geralt can't _breathe_ , and as much as he'd tried to push it away, tried to find a reason to discredit the idea, he can't deny the truth any longer.

The bard is Jaskier. Jaskier, his (precious, beloved) Viper, who would meet him in the north with a grin and a story when he descended from Kaer Morhen every spring. Jaskier, who scolded him for being too soft and kind for a witcher, while doing everything he could to protect him from the cruel parts of their world. Jaskier, who had pressed his twined snake medallion into Geralt's hands two and a half years ago and _promised_ to come back to him.

Jaskier, who he had (reluctantly, after a year, and even then only after Blaviken) assumed died when the Viper School was recalled and wiped out by Nilfgaardian forces, and who he'd grieved desperately.

_"What would you do, do you think?" Jaskier asked him, perched on a tree branch and absently picking at his third-hand, always-out-of-tune lute. "If you weren't a witcher, I mean?"_

_"Not sure," Geralt said, and stopped cleaning his armor to think about it. "A farmer?" he ventured. "Maybe a trapper?"_

_Jaskier's laugh was low and rich, and it made part of Geralt bloom under it._

_"Well, that's fair," Jaskier said. "You've always loved simple things." He swung out of the tree, battered lute cradled carefully against his side, so he could go up on tiptoe and kiss Geralt's cheek. "And would such a simple man be willing to suffer the presence of a simple bard to brighten his days and sing in the nearest tavern on busy nights?" he asked, his lips barely pulled back from Geralt's skin, his breath warm against his cheek._

_"If we had the chance to be free?" Geralt mused, and turned his head to steal a kiss from his Viper. "I would suffer anything for you."_

_Jaskier smiled, languid and sharp, like the sweetest poison slowly seeping through Geralt's veins, and lowered the lute to the ground so he could kiss the wolf again, and again, and again._

_"You're mine even in this world, Wolf," Jaskier breathed in his ear later, when they'd stretched out on the bedrolls._

_"Always," Geralt replied, nearly inaudibly. Jaskier laughed sharply and kissed him again._

He found his chance, is all Geralt can think. Jaskier survived the massacre at Gorthur Gvaed and went to ground, and before he could find Geralt again, he got the chance to have the life he wanted. The life he _dreamed_ of.

Geralt looks after the carefree bard walking ahead of him, writing a song of kindness and heroism for a _witcher_ , and knows in his heart that he both cannot abandon him, and cannot be honest with him.

His Viper found a way to chase the dream he'd always had, and Geralt can't fault him for it. But he won't let him be unprotected either.

He nudges Roach into a slow trot so he can catch up to the boy who had once been his lover, and silently vows to keep him safe until the end of his life.

Jaskier saunters on, oblivious and still composing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refrained from going further in that stupid monty python and the holy grail joke in my opening notes and I for one think that's very sexy of me.
> 
> Thanks as ever and always to jackironsides who is a fucking _champ_ and has done lovely things to smooth out my prose. 
> 
> Please, come yell at me over on [tumblr](http://bygodstillam.tumblr.com), and remember that your comments are the fuel that make the writing train go choo-choo!


	3. steal the hours and turn the night into day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier's not having a very good time.
> 
> I, however, am having a _ball_.
> 
> Yes it's a day early, but I got antsy. 😛 Don't pretend y'all don't love how I keep posting shit early.

The only thing Jaskier is aware of is pain.

He remembers the pain from before, when he felt like he was being ripped to shreds by his own body. The overwhelmingly bright pain – that felt like he had fire in every inch of him, every vein, every organ, every minuscule stretch of skin – has passed at least. He still feels scraped raw and burned, but it's lessened. Certain parts of him hurt in more aching or sharp ways, but he can't quite figure out where any of his body even _is_ , so he's not sure what parts those are. Everything's dark and painful but weirdly dulled, and he can't find his hands, or his eyes, or his mouth.

There are sounds, strangely muffled, and part of him thinks they might be voices? And he can remember the pain but not what caused it. Why does he feel like he's been doused in dragonfire? He must've been with Geralt, then. There's no reason a bard alone would be attacked by a dragon. 

He tries to find his mouth, tries to call for Geralt, or ask for someone to verify that Geralt's _alive_ , but he's not sure he quite manages, and while he hears something similar to his voice resonating in his head (he thinks it's his head, is that what his head feels like?), he can't tell if he manages to say _anything_ coherent.

"Shhhh," comes a voice next to his ear, and it says more that he can't sort into words, and then something cool and gentle flows into him (down his throat?) and the darkness takes him again.

* * *

He wakes more, after that.

It's always brief. Flashes of pain and consciousness and sometimes words. There's a time he wakes to deafening screaming because _his hands, his hands are on fucking fire_ , and he thinks he's the one screaming but can't be sure, and someone puts a hand on his forehead and suddenly everything is gone again.

His ribs hurt. He thinks they're his ribs.

He finally manages to make something come into focus, briefly, when he opens his eyes. Wood beams and drying herbs and far too much light.

"Don't move," a voice says, trying to soothe but it’s far too loud, gentle hands pushing him back as he tries – painfully – to sit up. "This will help," it says, and tips something into Jaskier's mouth, and before he slips back into the darkness, all he thinks is that he's glad he can tell what his mouth is, now.

Another time, he's alone.

He can't push the pain away, and it's ... _less_ than it was. It's certain spiking points of pain instead of the whole of him. His hands, his ribs, his head. The smell of herbs is overwhelming. 

He opens his eyes and turns his head. There's a paper that's fallen from the healer's – the mage's? – the _desk_ that seems to be part of an antidote to certain memory curses. He doesn't know how he knows that. Oh, can he read it? He can read it. He doesn't know how he can _read_ that across the room as it is.

He tries to understand the sounds outside, fails as his pain overwhelms him, and falls silent and still.

* * *

Jaskier doesn't know how much time passes. All he knows is sleeping and waking and pain and too much _everything_ pushing against his ears and his nose and his eyes. 

He's vaguely conscious when he's sat up slightly to swallow some broth. The smell is too fucking strong, the smell of sweat and blood wafting up under it and almost gagging him. He keeps his eyes screwed shut against the brightness of the sunlight coming through the window.

"You need more sleep," a woman's voice says, loud enough he winces from the pain while his head is pounding. There are _so many sounds_ , it feels like the worst hangover in the world on top of another hangover on top of a fever on top of the worst injury he can imagine.

"Too loud," he manages to croak out. There's a new smell that tastes sour on the back of his tongue, but he can't quite identify it.

"All right," that voice says, quieter, and another cup is pressed to his lips. "Sleep, witcher," she says, and Jaskier sighs in relief that Geralt's still here and alive as he drifts back into unconsciousness.

When he wakes again, it's actually _not_ the pain that he notices first, but the _smell_. The pain hits before he can process more than a clean smell with blood under it, but it's a change, at least. Jaskier groans and cracks his eyes open, grateful that he's apparently less sensitive to light at this point, because it appears to be midday by the brightness but it doesn't hurt his head so much.

He goes to sit up but finds his arms shaky when he tries to move them, so he decides that lying still, closing his eyes, and taking stock of his situation is probably a better plan.

His head aches, like maybe he had a nasty concussion, which could be why he doesn't remember why he's in pain. His ribs ache, though he's not sure anything's broken, there's a low-lying tingling promise of possible nerve pain all over his body, and his hands— 

Fuck being cautious. Jaskier lurches upright, which floods him with a wave of nausea and dizziness, and he looks down at his hands: carefully splinted and bandaged and aching. And then at what he can see of his body, shirtless but with his skin almost invisible under the bandages.

Doran. The curse. Blinding pain. (Thinking Geralt must be here because he was delirious and then someone said 'witcher', but that can't be right, can it?) What the fuck had that curse even _been_? Doran had said a transformation curse but he still feels human, his body still feels familiar, if aching, so what's different?

Except ... now that he thinks about it, his body _doesn't_ feel familiar. It feels wound tight in a way that he doesn't think has anything to do with pain. He's almost overwhelmingly sensitive to sounds and smells in a way he never has been before, and a glance through the window shows that the sky is only just lightening with sunrise, but he can see as clearly as if it were noon on a clear day. He's stressed and in pain and panicked but his heart isn't racing: it seems to be beating as if he was relaxed and dozing off. Although it's not racing, his thoughts are, fast and frantic, and he can hear and smell _so much_ , and he knows he needs to calm down, but it's _hard_. He closes his eyes and wishes he could plug his ears and focuses on the smell of dried meadowsweet that seems like it's right under his nose, trying to ignore everything else.

He takes a deep breath, then another, trying to slow his thoughts and focus. And it ... works. It's like being doused in cold water on a hot day; as he keeps breathing he feels the worst of the fear and franticness slow and dissipate, and his body relaxes. His heartbeat slows and slows and he almost starts panicking again because is he _dying_? But then it steadies out at a rate that feels familiar somehow, and Jaskier keeps breathing. 

There's something niggling at the edge of his thoughts that he can't quite tease out, something that explains all of this, but even the pain in his hands and his ribs and his head seems to melt out as he breathes in the meadowsweet, so he just keeps doing that. Now that he's calmer, he feels a twinge of pain smelling it – reminds him of Geralt making him meadowsweet tea when he'd gotten a mild infection in a scrape he'd gotten on the road, of tucking a little sachet of dried meadowsweet and lavender into his bedroll so it would smell soothing from a distance after Geralt had admitted he liked the scent.

Geralt. Jaskier's eyes fly open and his calm flees. Geralt's heartbeat is slow, slower than a normal human's even when he's just nearly been impaled by a dying monster collapsing on him. _Geralt's_ heartbeat is this slow.

Because he's _a witcher_.

Jaskier staggers to his feet awkwardly, as they're trembling and he can't use his hands, and looks frantically for something reflective. A small mirror hangs on the wall nearby, and Jaskier ignores a rippling shock that stabs through his nerves at the movement as he weaves towards it. He thinks, at first, that he's panicked for nothing, because he sees blue as he makes his eyes focus on the swaying image, but once he steadies himself with a forearm against the wall, he feels the floor fall out from under him as he stares into his reflection.

The eyes that stare back are still blue, but shot through with a familiar molten gold and split by a cat-slit pupil.

"Oh," Jaskier whispers, painfully loud to his own ears, and then the world turns on its side and he falls back into the far-too-familiar blackness.

* * *

He wakes again mid-morning with a soft groan, and he's back in the bed he'd been sleeping in all this time, Doran sitting next to the bed with a book in his lap and worried frown on his face.

"Oh, thank the gods," Doran says softly, and reaches out to press a cool hand to Jaskier's forehead. His voice is still a bit too loud to Jaskier's ears, and the rustling of his clothes as he moves is distracting, but it's not splitting his head open, at least. "And no fever. Good. I was more than a little worried when I woke up and found you collapsed on the floor on the far side of the room."

"Right," Jaskier breathes, and his mouth is dry and cottony, and his voice sounds raw from overexertion. Screaming, probably, if his fragmented memories are to be believed. "Had to ... see the mirror," he mumbles.

"Here, drink this," Doran says, his voice still blessedly low, and reaches to help Jaskier sit up enough to drink some water. It's cool and tastes of herbs. Licorice and marshmallow root, maybe? "Not too fast. Don't want you getting sick after everything, you've been mostly unconscious for the last week."

"Thanks." Jaskier's voice is a _touch_ smoother after the water, and he takes a long, deep breath and holds it for a moment, just trying to sort everything out.

"I'm _so_ sorry, Jaskier," Doran says, and there's a hint of something earthy and unpleasantly fermented under everything else that he smells like, and the blood and sweat that still clings to Jaskier's own body. Which is an odd thing to be able to notice, but he supposes that's normal. 

For a witcher.

Which he apparently is.

"Why can't I remember this?" he asks, gesturing to his eyes, his voice raspy as he tries to speak louder than a whisper. "What _happened_?"

" _Ah_. The mirror." Doran lets out an almost inaudible laugh, absolutely no humor in it. "Of course you put it together before I had to break the news to you. Of any non-witcher in the world, I suppose Jaskier the bard would be best able to work it out."

 _Jaskier the bard_ , Doran says, and Jaskier feels the splints on his hands and the ache in their bones, and lets out an uncertain noise. It's not a whimper, it's much more dignified and ... no, that's untrue. He's terrified – of _course_ he's going to whimper a little when he's laying here, aching and confused, and absolutely miserable. He struggles to sit up, and Doran reaches out and supports him, carefully helping him scoot back to sit upright, adjusting pillows behind his back.

"What _happened_?" Jaskier asks again, once a rippling spasm of nerve pain fades. "I just remember so much fucking _pain_ , and ..." and that thing that was just out of reach, that he can't quite remember the shape of.

"I honestly don't know, entirely," Doran admits. "I broke what I could of the curse, but it ..." There's a pause, and Doran grimaces, and Jaskier tries to figure out if it's guilt or regret that's causing that uncomfortable fermented smell. Geralt had said, before, that he could smell when Jaskier was in pain, or afraid, or any number of things. Jaskier knows, somehow, that this scent is something like bad-shame-fear-sad, though he's not sure how and he's not sure what it would translate to. Maybe it means guilt _and_ regret. Maybe there are nuances only properly trained witchers know that would tell him.

"What happened to my hands?" Jaskier asks, trying to urge an explanation, _any_ explanation, out of him.

"I managed to break half of the curse," Doran says eventually, tipping the cup of water with probably-licorice-and-marshmallow-root back to Jaskier's lips. A second drink makes his throat hurt less, so he's not complaining. "Your body just started *changing*. Wounds opening, bones shattering. Once it seemed like it had stopped and you were unconscious, I had someone ride hard to fetch the healer from the next town over, and I tended to you the best I could until she got here."

" _Half_ the curse?" Jaskier asks, a little louder – not that 'a little louder' was more than increasing the whisper he'd been speaking in to a slightly louder whisper, to avoid giving himself a headache.

"There's more of it that was under the first part," Doran says, sounding weary and exhausted. "I ... overestimated my abilities and didn't properly isolate all the aspects of the curse so I could be _sure_ it would come undone. It was a mistake, and one that could've cost you your life, and while it may do little good for you now, I swear on my life that I won't do something like that again unless I'm _positive_ I can finish the job."

Jaskier looks at Doran blankly for a moment, trying to decide if he's angry or bitter or upset.

Mostly, he thinks he's just _tired_.

"Essentially," Doran continues when Jaskier doesn't say anything, "you ... well, I think the curse being lifted returned you to the physical state you'd been in when it was cast." There's a pause for breath, and Jaskier feels like he should be able to understand what's going unsaid. Maybe he could, if he hadn't spent the last week unconscious and the last gods-only-knows how long under a curse that he still hasn't quite shaken.

"What state?" Jaskier asks.

"It looked like you were tortured, honestly," Doran says with a wince. "And, of course, the ..."

"Witcheriness," Jaskier supplies, sighing and letting his eyes slip shut. "The rest of the curse," he starts, then trails off uncertainly. He's not even sure what he wants to know. 

"It's to do with memory," Doran says, confirming the fluttering thought swirling in Jaskier's head. "That's why I thought it had been on you since childhood. If you were a witcher, they'd need to rewrite your memories back to before you were given to them." It made sense. It made such painful, awful sense, and Jaskier wondered exactly how far back his false childhood went, and how much of his adulthood had really happened. Wondered if he'd _ever_ know.

I ..." Doran cleared his throat and continued. "Unfortunately I can't see the shape of the memory curse clearly. When I undid the transformation curse, it ... I didn't have enough in me to undo it as well." He looks down, then out the window, away from Jaskier's face. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help, but ... I am."

 _No, it doesn't_ , Jaskier thinks, gritting his teeth against another ripple of pain crawling up his body. But he can't quite find it in him to be angry when there's still that sour fermented smell in the air. Doran shouldn't have offered, Jaskier shouldn't have accepted. Yet another pile of shit that Jaskier could have avoided, if he'd taken a day or two to let his common sense catch up with him.

"Fuck," he exhales.

"Yeah," Doran agrees quietly. He stands, then, and moves to the door. "I'll let you process it for a bit, then bring in some broth. I'll just be in the next room if you need me." He closes the door behind him, though it doesn't do anything to mask the sound of his movements to Jaskier's overly sensitive ears.

Jaskier grimaces down at his hands – currently useless, uncertainly healed – and gives in to the wave of stress and grief that had been looming since he'd met his reflection's eyes in the mirror last night.

If Doran hears his tears or sees the tracks down his cheeks when he comes back with a bowl of broth, the mage doesn't say a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you to jackironsides for the work he did on this chapter, it would be SIGNIFICANTLY weaker without his input and comments. Dor, you're an angel.
> 
> As always, I am easily found and yelled at on [tumblr](http://bygodstillam.tumblr.com), and your comments and tears are my mana from heaven.


	4. i'll run until i begin to understand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap in, folks, this one's an extra long one!

They're being hunted.

Geralt hasn't managed to pick out exactly what's been following him and Jaskier since they left the city's market, but he can feel its eyes on them, catches a shadow darting out of sight in the corner of his eye. It has him on edge, even more than cities like this already do.

Jaskier, of course, is oblivious. It's a strange change from who he'd been before, one that even five years of on and off travel together like this hasn't made any more familiar. Geralt still sometimes expects to turn to him, having noticed something _off_ around them, and find Jaskier's sharp eyes already scanning their surroundings, nostrils flaring slightly, a hand resting near a hidden blade. He'd never had quite as good night vision as Geralt, either from the difference between Wolf and Viper mutagens or from not having an extra round of them, but he'd always been quicker to spot small movements and details. Geralt never knew if his eyes were truly sharper or if his instincts and training had sharpened his ability to process what he saw in a way Geralt's never did. He'd always wondered, always intended to ask, but now Geralt will never know, because the man who could've answered is gone. Jaskier hasn't noticed anything at all, just babbling away about his latest song or something, totally oblivious as usual.

It's up to Geralt alone to keep them safe.

The sensation of threat doesn't dissipate as they secure a room for the night, and Geralt resigns himself to a long night in a tavern that will be too loud, too smelly, and utterly miserable, because Jaskier needs to play and Geralt doesn't want to leave him alone. It seems more likely that _he_ is the one being hunted, but he can't risk that Jaskier is the target.

Or that whoever or whatever it is might take Jaskier as bait.

"Well, there's a tavern just down the road," Jaskier says, straightening his doublet and grabbing his lute case. "I'll probably be late back. Don't brood _too_ hard while I'm gone," he adds, shooting Geralt a knowing and mildly exasperated look that makes Geralt's stomach twist from the familiarity. It seems like something of that feeling creeps onto his face, like it too often does, because Jaskier's expression falters for just a split second before snapping to his performance smile. The one that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Right," he says, even though Geralt can practically taste the disappointment rolling off him, for some reason. "Anyway, I—"

"I'm coming with you," Geralt interrupts, and grabs his swords to strap back on as he stands. He won't bother with armor, it would stick out too much this deep into the city, with no bags to indicate he came straight to the tavern, but his hackles are still up and he's not going to put Jaskier at risk.

"Oh, I, alright then!" Jaskier replies, his voice chipper but his expression confused. "Though, ah, the swords?"

"Hmm." And how to explain how he is sure they're being followed, _hunted_ , without worrying his bard? "Saw some men who didn't like the look of me. Might be trouble." It seemed reasonable enough – they _had_ seen trouble from unsavory sorts over the past five years, Jaskier probably wouldn't question that, Geralt thinks. _Hopes_ , because he's taking silver too, just to be safe.

Jaskier's eyes look from Geralt's face to the handles of his swords, slung on his back already, with something like suspicion without any real distrust. Geralt doesn't know the expression, doesn't know how to translate it, but it feels like Jaskier knows he's lying but ... but what? Geralt doesn't move for a moment, waiting for the inevitable question.

"Okay," Jaskier says after a moment, nodding like he's decided something, and turns to head out the door, already chattering about how he hopes this tavern has something better than stale bread and watery ale, and Geralt follows out of instinct born of a longer familiarity than only five years, even as his mind reels. 

Jaskier doesn't _not_ ask questions, not this newer, younger one. He's curious about everything, despises being kept in the dark about anything, and he absolutely without a shadow of a doubt knows that Geralt hadn't been honest with him about why he was bringing his swords. So why doesn't he _ask_?

They get to the tavern and Jaskier does a quick scan of the room before pushing Geralt towards a particular table. In the corner. In shadow. Out of the way.

Close to the door.

"Right," he says with an easy grin. "I'll get drinks sent over, and dinner for my break in an hour or so, yeah?" Geralt nods shortly, and watches Jaskier trot up to the proprietor with his most charming smile. He probably watches for a bit longer than is decent, before turning and retreating to the best table in the inn for his purposes. 

Jaskier whirls back into his personal space just long enough to set down a mug of cider (apparently this city's cider is better than its ale, thanks to a nearby orchard or two) and wink cheekily at him before sweeping up onto a table that can be seen by everyone in the room and beginning to play. 

Somehow, it's the wink that does it. It's so loose and friendly and unbothered. It doesn't make sense for Jaskier to feel like that around Geralt, especially knowing Geralt's lying, unless ...

Unless for some unknown and ill-advised reason, the idiotic bard _trusts_ him.

It's too much, almost, for Geralt to really process. Jaskier absolutely knows the things people say about witchers, he's heard whispers of things witchers have done, that Geralt himself has done. He'd known Geralt's name and his reputation when they met.

And yet, he's willingly traveled with Geralt for five years, coming back again and again. He's written songs about Geralt specifically (and witchers in general) to try to humanize them, make them heroes instead of monsters. It's even _worked_ , to a degree. And he's never once smelled like fear around Geralt, unless it was caused by someone else or Geralt's gotten himself injured.

(Geralt had thought it was the sight of him covered in viscera and sometimes still affected by his potions, until the day he'd passed out from blood loss outside camp and woken to find Jaskier had dragged him the rest of the way and was bandaging him up with trembling hands. Jaskier had cursed at him and monsters and the state of the world as he'd tended to him, and Geralt had realized the only thing about the situation that scared Jaskier was the thought Geralt might've died. It still weighs heavy in his mind to think about it.)

Fuck. The bard _trusts_ him, thinks Geralt can keep him safe and protected, which Geralt is increasingly uncertain he can do, given how much trouble Jaskier seems to get into anywhere they go. But somehow worse than that, Jaskier believes that Geralt will only lie to him if he has good reason, and it's overwhelming. It's _true_ , admittedly, but in Geralt's experience what is true and what is believed by others is rarely the same thing. Sometimes trust can be the cruellest thing you can give to a person.

_"I'll be back before the thaw lets you wolves out of your den,_ _"_ had been a lie, and Geralt believed it with all his heart, trusting it to be true. 

_"It isn't like them to send out a summons instead of going to ground ..."_ had apparently been the truth, but Geralt had agreed the thought should be distrusted, both of them trusting the sense of duty and brotherhood that went with being a witcher. 

_"I will always come back to you, until the day I die,"_ remains something that Geralt can't quantify, a promise made into the shape of a lie, now that he knows that death never came. A promise he can't quite believe anymore. Not when there's a twisted snake medallion in a hidden pocket of his bags and a careless, reckless bard dancing on a table fifteen feet away. Trust was a frightening thing, especially when put in another person.

Jaskier plays and sings and flirts and earns their meal and some more coin besides. Geralt sits in the corner and watches for possible threats, and tries to understand how to accept being trusted.

* * *

Jaskier's been playing for nearly two hours, and taken twenty minutes to eat his supper, when Geralt sees the shadow at the window. It could be nothing, just someone passing by, but the way it moves unsettles him, and he slips out to verify if it is or isn't the thing hunting them.

The street is dark, to the point that Geralt isn't completely sure that he hadn't imagined the shadow at the window, but—

_There_. A heartbeat. A heartbeat that is far too slow for a human. There are a few monsters it could be, and it's downwind, so Geralt can't tell for certain that it's another witcher, but it seems likely. And not a friendly one, given how he's hiding in the shadows.

"I know you're there, _brother_ ," he rumbles, too soft for a human to hear even within a few feet of him, but his current guess about the identity of their hunter is proven accurate when a black-armored man with shortswords and a familiar-looking twisted snake medallion steps into the faint light coming from the moon and the tavern windows.

"You travel with our _traitor_ , wolf," the man snaps. "You are _not_ my brother."

"And _you_ will not hurt him," Geralt says, grimly drawing his steel sword, though he doesn't fall into a stance of any sort. 

The Viper growls low, viciously angry, and darts forward, drawing his fangs. Geralt barely has time to dodge and parry, falling into a defensive stance as the other witcher whirls to attack again. Again. Dodge, parry, dodge, parry, feint and roll.

Neither of them are out of breath, but the Viper holds back for the moment, both of them circling warily.

"Why are you _defending_ him? We knew he was fond of his White Wolf, but we never thought you were his _dog_ ," the Viper hisses. Geralt snarls, but doesn't otherwise rise to the bait as the Viper continues. "He betrayed us! He gave Gorthur Gvaed to Nilfgaard!"

"He wouldn't have," Geralt snaps back, his voice a low growl. "And even if he had, the man you're seeking doesn't _exist_ anymore. The man in that tavern is not a witcher."

The Viper's lip curls, and he resumes the attack in earnest. "We know he received the summons," he says as his swords crash against Geralt's. "He's the only one who went and survived. He's the only one who hasn't sought the rest of us out."

Geralt takes advantage of the Viper's dual wielding and takes one hand off his sword grip just long enough to cast a quick aard, knocking the other witcher against a stone wall and stunning him just enough for Geralt to get his sword pressed against the Viper's throat.

"A truce," he rumbles, a thread of anger and threat weaving through his voice. "You don't know the shape of it."

The Viper sneers, and looks like he'll try to keep fighting, but then stills and nods, dropping his swords to the ground in a show of good faith. Geralt steps back and sheathes his sword in turn. There are few enough witchers left that Geralt is willing to give an angry Viper the benefit of a bit of trust.

"Tell me the shape of it, then, Wolf," the Viper says, his words short and clipped. "He ran away and got a glamour so he could prance about like a jester, you trailing in his wake? I hadn't thought it was really him until I saw _you_."

"No," Geralt snaps, fists clenching. "He ... doesn't remember. It's not just a glamour, he's truly human again. I don't know how, and he doesn't remember any life but the one he thinks he's lived, just a storyteller and a bard." He's never said it out loud, and it tears at something in his chest, but he grits it out. "Even if Jaskier would've done that, which he didn't, because he was the most loyal person I've ever met, the man in there _isn't that Jaskier_."

The Viper frowns, his eyes flicking briefly to the windows of the tavern before meeting Geralt's again. "Even if he doesn't remember," he says, but with less venom than before, "he's the only one unaccounted for. The _only one_. He needs to pay the price for that."

Geralt lets out a deep sigh, rubbing a hand over his mouth and not giving in to the urge to look away. This isn't _just_ about not wanting to see Jaskier dead. Jaskier had always dreamed of something bigger than being a witcher. Something better. But even he wouldn't have sold out his brothers for the chance of having something more than what fate had given him.

"You'll get no satisfaction killing him," Geralt says finally. "He doesn't remember. He'll have no idea why he's dying, and all you'll have done was punish and murder a confused _boy_ who's never even heard of Gorthur Gvaed, or the School of the Viper." He wills this man, Jaskier's brother whose name he'll probably never know, to understand. To agree. To let the bard live. Even if he can't convince them Jaskier never would've betrayed them, Geralt can at least try to convince them it's not worth killing him.

The Viper lets out a frustrated growl and goes to pick up his swords, one at a time, sheathing them. "Fine," he snaps. "You speak truth, as much as it pains me to admit it. Killing a bard who doesn't remember betraying us would solve nothing." He stops and meets Geralt's eyes again, reflecting the torchlight in a way that made his gaze seem to crackle and snap. "If he ever remembers, though, we'll find out sooner or later. And his life _will_ be forfeit."

"As long as you hear him out before slitting his throat," Geralt rumbles, but the knot in his chest loosens just the tiniest bit. "He doesn't remember, and neither of us were there. There may be more to his story. There may have been someone else."

The Viper snorts, but waves Geralt off. "We'll do as we see fit, if it comes to that," he says. "But you have my word as your brother that we won't move on him unless we are certain he remembers."

"Thank you," Geralt grits out as the Viper melts into the shadows and away from the Tavern. 

That could've gone worse, he thinks as he rolls his shoulders and slips back into the tavern in the midst of a rousing drinking song about a sailor and his lady love who happens to also be the lady love of every man on his ship. It's bawdy and ridiculous, one of the classics, which means Jaskier's probably shifting from his own compositions to the sorts of familiar songs that drunken audiences seem to favor.

Jaskier's eyes meet his almost immediately, and though he keeps singing, leading the various patrons in the familiar chorus, he tilts his head slightly at Geralt, an expression Geralt's learned well over the last five years. He nods in response and resumes his vigil at the corner table. _—_ _All well?_ _—_ _Yes._

It's a different meaning than it would've been Before, he thinks, gratefully accepting another mug of cider nervously offered by the barmaid. Brave girl, for all her hands were trembling; he'll leave an extra ducat or two for her if he can spare any. Before, Jaskier would be asking if Geralt had dealt with the problem, or if he needed another blade at his back to finish the job.

Geralt is perversely glad, for once, that the bard doesn't know any of that. The confrontation he had in the street would've ended with at least one dead Viper in the gutter, if Jaskier had known enough to provide a second blade, and Geralt can't be sure it wouldn't have been the stranger.

That it wouldn't have been Jaskier in the next town, or the next, or the next.

Eventually, Jaskier finishes playing and cheerfully bows out of an encore or continued performance, grabbing a mug from the barmaid and staying just long enough to, Geralt assumes, flatter her unnecessarily. Maybe he'll try to take the barmaid to bed tonight – it wouldn't be the first time, and Geralt would hate it as much as he always did, but he could hope. He could hope that his company would one day be enough, even if he wasn't able to be romantic with him. He knew it was a fool's hope, but he'd always been a fool when it came to Jaskier.

But Jaskier _doesn't_ stay and flirt with the barmaid, instead flopping down at the corner table across from Geralt with a wide and satisfied smile. 

"Well!" he exclaims. "That went rather well, don't you think? They were perfectly amenable to my witchery songs, and you _know_ how hard I work on those ones. And an end to the performance that left them wanting more, but not so much they feel cheated! Absolutely perfect."

Geralt didn't know how to respond to any of it, really. His Viper wasn't actually skilled enough at music to play at being a bard, not really – the few chords he knew weren't enough to entertain anyone other than themselves for very long, and his lute had, frankly, been a piece of shit. Five years of spending time with a bard, and he still isn't sure what's expected of him when Jaskier starts babbling about anything related to his music or his trade. Geralt settles for a grunt, and Jaskier seems to accept that. He usually does.

" _Anyway_ , you're seeming much more relaxed than you were when we got here," Jaskier continues, his smile still casual and loose, but his eyes sharply watching Geralt's face. "While I'd like to think that's from my fantastic skills as a musician and performer, we both know that's sadly untrue. So you must've dealt with whatever was making you so nervous earlier?"

Geralt freezes, eyes locked on Jaskier, sitting there looking curious and casual, like he wants to be told what happened but won't be too bothered if he's not. It's ... unsettling. 

He must stay frozen for a moment too long, because a flicker of something like disappointment crosses Jaskier's face, which makes Geralt's chest twist, because he hates being the cause of that kind of expression on Jaskier's face, even when he has to be. It's gone quickly, though, and Jaskier just shrugs.

"Well, anyway, I think I might want to tweak the—"

"A fleder," Geralt blurts out, coming up with the first easy-to-kill monster who might be in a city that he can think of. It wouldn't hold up too well, but it was better than having to explain that he'd gotten into a fight with another witcher, who thought Jaskier was someone else and wanted to kill him, but whom he'd convinced to leave them alone for now. Jaskier blinks, confused and startled.

"I—what?"

"What was bothering me," Geralt clarifies, trying to sound believable. "Fleder. Lesser vampire, sometimes you find 'em in bad parts of town. Sensed it before we got to the inn. Didn't want you getting jumpy."

"Oh!" Jaskier says with a wide grin, and Geralt feels a pang of guilt for lying, even though there's nothing else he can _do_. "Well, I can appreciate that. You _could've_ just said, though, if I was going to be with you or in the tavern, I'd've been safe as houses, no need for being jumpy."

Now Geralt feels less guilt and more exasperation. This boy doesn't have _any_ sense of self-preservation and it made protecting him _very difficult_. "Also didn't want you following me," he grumbles, which just makes Jaskier laugh.

"Come on, you worrywart," Jaskier says, draining his mug and reaching over to clap Geralt on the shoulder. "You killed a vampire and sat through my _entire_ performance. You must be absolutely exhausted."

He isn't, of course, but he doesn't mind being able to leave _with_ Jaskier, instead of sticking around and suffering through the racket of the tavern or letting him walk back alone. The Viper he fought may have agreed not to hurt Jaskier for now, but Geralt worries.

He'll probably spend the rest of Jaskier's life worrying, and all he can do is hope he has to worry for a long damn time.

* * *

The Viper keeps his word, and seems to spread the news, because Geralt doesn't so much as hear rumors of any of them after that confrontation. It doesn't stop him from being paranoid for a few weeks afterwards. But nothing happens. They travel, he kills monsters, Jaskier writes songs. He doesn't go back to Kaer Morhren in the winter, hasn't since Posada. He avoids telling Jaskier that it even exists, that it was ever a thing he did. The last time he'd left Jaskier for the winter to go to Kaer Morhen, Gorthur Gvaed had been sacked.

It wasn't like he's required to go, anyway. He misses his brothers, but he'll see them again or he won't, that's always the life. And in the meantime, he'll look out for Jaskier.

* * *

Nine years of traveling with the bard, and he's suddenly sitting in a bath while Jaskier rambles about the benefits and honor of being asked to perform at Princess Pavetta's betrothal feast. Geralt had put up a token resistance at best, and he gets the feeling that Jaskier already knew he'd say yes before asking, which is both infuriating and endearing.

Jaskier dumps a lukewarm bucket of water over Geralt's head, chiding him for his "boorish grunts of protest". Geralt doesn't tell him he just wishes the water were warmer. (A lifetime ago, Jaskier had always been able to get the water just hot enough for him, archly promising that one day Geralt would end up scalding his own skin off. Geralt would only ever grin, because Jaskier still made it hot enough, every time.)

"It is one night bodyguarding your very best friend in the whole wide world," Jaskier declares brightly. "How hard could it be?"

Geralt manages to keep his grimace mostly contained, and Jaskier's not able to look him in the eye where he is, so it's probably all right. Very best friend indeed. A very best friend wouldn't lie to Jaskier about who he is to them. Or snap at him just to have a moment to come up with an excuse for not telling the truth.

"I'm not your friend," Geralt grunts out, not quite managing to express anything coherent that he's actually feeling. A very best friend wouldn't tell Jaskier that, either. 

"Oh. Oh, really?" Jaskier sounds dubious and amused, smells familiar and fond. "You usually just let strangers rub chamomile onto your lovely bottom?" 

Geralt is desperately glad that he can't blush properly, because there's a prickling in his cheeks that would certainly be one if he could. It had been one time, only a few weeks ago, and he'd needed Jaskier's help rubbing some healing salve into the bruising he'd developed from a particularly nasty fight. It would be fine in a day or two, but he needed to be able to ride, without being in an obscene amount of pain.

He doesn't _say_ anything, just glowers up at Jaskier, whose eyebrows are raised and who has a tiny smug smile quirking at his lips, and Geralt suddenly can't _breathe_ from how familiar that expression is.

"Yeah, well, yeah, exactly," Jaskier says, his expression softening into fondness as he turns away to continue fussing with everything in the damn room. "That’s what I thought."

Geralt hates being around Jaskier sometimes. Times like this, usually, when the fact that he is the same man as the witcher Geralt had spent so long loving becomes so omnipresent it's overwhelming. A tilt of the head that's far too familiar. A sharp laugh at the expense of someone he's just insulted viciously for saying something cruel about Geralt. Warm sunlight at sunset catching his eyes and making it look like there's gold in them.

Jaskier's nattering, mostly about nothing, which is a relief, because his Viper may have liked to chat, but it was rarely about nothing, and that's enough to let Geralt breathe again. He responds to what Jaskier's saying, but it's the sort of conversation he doesn't have to fully be present for.

Until suddenly it is.

"Come _on_ ," Jaskier is protesting, standing across from Geralt, looking down at him. "You must want _something_ for yourself once all this … monster hunting nonsense is over with."

_A farm or a workshop or a stable, and a bard with an out-of-tune lute whose presence I suffer gladly,_ Geralt's mind supplies rebelliously. He grits his teeth.

"I want nothing," is all he says out loud, jaw clenched. It's true enough – he wants nothing the world can give him anymore, and this that he has with Jaskier-the-bard will have to do.

"Well, who knows?" Jaskier says lightly, crouching down at the foot of the tub to rest his arms on the lip. "Maybe someone out there will want _you_."

And Jaskier doesn't know, Geralt knows Jaskier doesn't know how much that idea hurts him. Jaskier thinks he's lonely and it might be true, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that none of the company in the world, not even Jaskier's own company, could fill the gap that's always there in the shape of the witcher he'd known and loved. He doesn't need to be wanted by anyone else. He doesn't _want_ to be wanted by anyone else.

"I need no one. And the last thing I want is someone needing me." A lie and a truth snarled out in as many breaths. Maybe he can even convince himself to believe it.

Jaskier's eyes go soft and sad in a way that his Viper's never did, in a way that is truly unique to this silly bard, and Geralt suddenly can't breathe again for an entirely different reason.

"And yet, here we are," Jaskier says softly, with the cadence and vulnerability of a love confession, and Geralt can only stare and try to breathe for a long long moment, letting out a low hum more out of habit than anything, then tears his eyes away, casting about for his clothes. He can't be here, can't be this defenseless in the face of Jaskier's soft voice and piercing eyes, because it _is_ a love confession. Jaskier loves him. This stupid, careless, ridiculous idiot bard loves him.

And Geralt realizes abruptly that he loves this idiot bard back.

_I love you, too, I think_ , his mind says.

"Where the fuck are my clothes, Jaskier?" his mouth translates.

It's probably the safer option, anyway. It wouldn't be fair to Jaskier to always be tied up in the memory of someone else. Geralt's glad he didn't say anything stupid that he couldn't take back.

Really. He's glad.

* * *

It shouldn't be a difficult night. Protect Jaskier from a much more mundane sort of threat than usual, drink some fancy wine he'd never get a chance to drink otherwise, watch a bunch of idiot lords peacocking around to prove which of them's the strongest and bravest and stupidest.

Instead, he leaves in a rush, without even considering if the bard would try to follow him, fleeing the consequences of his mind being so preoccupied by Jaskier Jaskier _Jaskier_ that he didn't think through what he said before it tumbled out of his mouth. What he _asked_ for.

Geralt flees the man he loves and the child he's bound to him, and hopes against hope that he won't have to own up to either.

* * *

Nightmares aren't common for witchers.

Or, more accurately, nightmares that keep witchers from sleeping aren't common. And yet Geralt's spent the last few weeks _hounded_ by nightmares. Some are old dreams, dreams he'd had after coming back to Kaer Morhen after the pogrom, dreams he'd had after they got the news that Gorthur Gvaed had fallen, dreams he'd had after Blaviken. Far too many: the ones that have made it impossible to sleep are new, and they all whirl around Jaskier.

Jaskier gone missing (again), and Geralt only finds bones scattered in the woods years later.

Jaskier, gutted by a monster he once could've easily dispatched, bleeds out before Geralt can even finish the beast off and say goodbye.

Jaskier, throat slit in a tavern by a vengeful cuckold four towns away from where he's trying to meet up with Geralt.

Jaskier, bored of trailing after Geralt on the Path, settling into a new, better life without even telling Geralt he's doing it.

Jaskier smiling sharp and fond and familiar at someone else, while Geralt watches.

The longer he spends away from Jaskier these days, the truer they seem. The more plausible, the more horrifyingly prophetic. It's why he'd always made an effort over the past sixteen years to at least place himself in the bard's path if they'd been apart too long. Nearly five months was the longest, three years ago, when a particularly brutal winter had kept Jaskier snowed in at the court he was wintering at until nearly April.

It's been six months since he went to stay with the Countess de Stael.

Geralt can't fucking _sleep_.

* * *

He heard old wives’ tales about a djinn thrown in a lake near Rinde years ago. Never gave much thought to it, frankly, because Geralt knows that djinns are bad news that you can't trust, that if you don't word your wishes perfectly, they'll try to twist them in ways that you'll regret and probably won't actually grant you what you want.

But he can't sleep, and it's starting to affect his ability to do ... basically anything. Even witchers need sleep eventually, meditation only doing so much, and Geralt is long past the point where he needs sleep. But every time he tries, those nightmares are there, pushing in on him, taunting him with Jaskier dying, Jaskier leaving, Jaskier hating him.

So here he is, in his shirtsleeves on the shore of a lake in Rinde, fishing for a djinn to wish away his nightmares so he can get a good night's sleep. Which, of course, is when the _object_ of said nightmares decides to present himself.

Geralt hears him before he sees him, tromping unsteadily through the woods. He hears the surprised and pleased way Jaskier stops humming to exclaim, "Oh, hullo Roach!" and the sound of his bag and lute case hitting the ground just slightly too hard for Jaskier to be fully in possession of his faculties. An assumption that is held up when Jaskier starts singing a bawdy song loudly and off-key, and the breeze brings down the familiar poisonless scent of him, overlaid by a _lot_ of alcohol.

"'Cause Nilfgaard can kiss my—Geralt!" Jaskier sounds almost surprised to have found Geralt so close to his camp and his horse, his voice loud and piercing to Geralt's far-too-sensitive hearing, exacerbated by his exhaustion. Geralt represses the urge to snap at the bard as he tosses the net back into the water and Jaskier keeps chattering drunkenly. Jaskier doesn't get drunk during the day, and is usually not this drunk at all, which means that he's probably nursing a broken heart.

Geralt doesn't want to think about it. Or hear about it. He tunes out Jaskier's voice as best he can and keeps tossing out his net. Moves down the shoreline a bit further. Even though he doesn't want to hear about his broken heart, it's still reassuring to hear his voice after so long, rambling and melodic even when he isn't singing. He realizes that Jaskier's moved on from rambling about his precious fucking countess and is talking about _fishing_ , listing fish, and Geralt really cannot handle the thought of Jaskier trying to list every species of fish he's ever heard of.

"I'm not fishing," he grumbles, trying not to snap. He may not want to hear or think about the Countess, but he also doesn't want to blame Jaskier for the nightmares he unwittingly features in. "I can't sleep."

"Right." Jaskier sounds like he's frowning, and his voice is lowering from drunk and melodramatic to actually concerned. "Good. Well, that – that makes sense. Insomuch, that it, sort of … _doesn’t_." Any hope Geralt had of not having to eventually explain everything goes up in smoke, with that tone. "What’s going on, Geralt? Talk to me."

Geralt sighs, and finally turns to look at Jaskier. He's flushed from the alcohol, his eyes a little glassy but focused on him nonetheless, a little furrow between his eyebrows and a slight downward turn to his lips. His hair is mussed in a way that seems more careless than his usual intentionally tousled look, and there's the faint bruised color of dark circles blooming under his too-wide eyes.

Geralt wonders if he's been having trouble sleeping, too.

And he wonders, with a sudden spike of guilt, when he stopped expecting to see and hear his Viper and started associating Jaskier with this, with concern and gentleness and kindness. When that soft tone, that soft, gentle _fucking_ tone of his became more familiar when he's injured or upset than the quiet (but loving) sharpness his Viper spoke in when he worried, even when Geralt was injured so badly they weren't sure he'd make it. He's grown used to this, to Jaskier's concern being soft and warm and feeling almost like home. Geralt wants to rest himself in it and be cared for. He wants to push it away, let it be directed at someone who fucking deserves it.

"A djinn," Geralt huffs in explanation, his jaw tightening, and Jaskier's concerned frown deepens to baffled confusion. Geralt turns back to the water and throws the net again, to avoid meeting those eyes.

"A what?"

"I'm looking," Geralt says, gritting his teeth against snarling or snapping, "for a djinn."

"For a dji—For a _djinn_? Like a _genie_?" Jaskier asks, laughing sharp and high, as if this was an answer that doesn't make sense and would never have crossed his mind. "The floaty fellas with the … the bad tempers and the banned magics? _That_ kind of genie?"

"It'll grant me wishes," Geralt growls, and why can't Jaskier just leave it alone, go back to his courts and noble patrons and the world he seems to always be trying to go back to? He'd be safer there than on the Path, at least, and if he's gone and safe, then Geralt can get rid of his nightmares and not have to worry they'll just start all over again the next time Jaskier leaves for months at a time, wooed by a pretty face and a fat purse. 

But no, Jaskier doesn't leave it alone, he stands there behind Geralt and _laughs_ , a scoffing sort of laugh that feels dismissive, instead of taking Geralt's hands and asking what use he'd have for a djinn's wishes, and offering to come up with a better option, and murmuring _come along, Pup_ while taking him back to his bedroll and soothing him to sleep. No, he's being dismissive and laughing and not noticing just how _miserable_ Geralt is, and it's suddenly so wrong it makes Geralt sick.

Geralt turns, lip curled and teeth gritted, and the sight of Jaskier in the wrong clothes with the wrong eyes and the wrong expression is too much, and his grip on his anger and resentment slips. "It's in this lake somewhere," he bellows, stepping towards Jaskier angrily, "and I can't _fucking sleep_!"

Jaskier's eyes widen and he takes half a step back, though to Geralt's mixed irritation and relief, there still isn't a whiff of actual fear in his scent. He doesn't really want to scare the bard. 

He just resents the fact that Jaskier-the-bard has somehow become more familiar and longed for, in his absences, than Jaskier-the-witcher is. Probably has been for a long time, and Geralt just never noticed.

Geralt turns to find a new spot to throw his net from, hoping that just maybe that will be that, but Jaskier seems to rally, pressing onward.

"I don’t mean to play priest’s ear or anything," he says, following Geralt and stumbling from the mix of drunkenness and unsteady terrain, "but has it occurred to you that maybe we’re merely rubbing _salve_ on a _tumor_? Not exactly addressing the _root cause_ of the problem?"

Geralt lets out a sigh that sounds more like a growl, letting Jaskier ramble on about Destiny and his Child Surprise, and all that nonsense from seven years ago, as if it has any bearing on this. As if it has any bearing on _them_.

"It's not that," Geralt says finally, firm and confident.

"Yeah, you’re probably right," Jaskier says, almost sounding like he might agree except for the clear tension of something unsaid still in the air. "But what if you’re not?" He's uncertain, almost plaintive, trying to reach out and have a conversation that Geralt's neither mentally or emotionally capable of having right now. Geralt doesn't like making Jaskier sound like that. He throws the net out again, trying to let the anger unwind and the words form so he can respond. Jaskier can tell when Geralt's trying to put words together instead of ignoring the conversation, he's shown a remarkable ability for that the last few years especially.

Except usually they're not trying to have important conversations when Jaskier is extremely drunk and Geralt is extremely sleep deprived.

"You know," Jaskier starts loftily, startling Geralt out of his attempt to meaningfully answer Jaskier's last question, "the Countess de Stael once said to me—"

Geralt snarls, the anger snapping back into place from the interruption, from the invocation of Jaskier's idiotic countess, and he interrupts Jaskier with a bitterly muttered, "Did you _sing_ to her before she left?"

It could've been teasing. If he'd held on to his calm, it could've been wry, and if Jaskier didn't catch the humor he could've just rolled his eyes and moved on. But instead it's biting, and unnecessarily cruel, and Geralt feels bad for saying it as soon as it's out, hopes maybe Jaskier doesn't hear it. Unfortunately even while drunk, Jaskier's hearing is sharp, for a human.

"I did, actually," Jaskier responds blithely, "and she …" he trails off, frowning, the actual words and tone catching up with him. "Why, what are you implying?" 

Geralt grits his teeth and glances over his shoulder at Jaskier, trying to will the man to just stop, just sit down, just let it be. 

"Oooohoho …" 

No such luck apparently, because Jaskier is stepping up behind him with his hands on his hips. Geralt pretends he doesn't see him. 

"We are _so_ having this conversation. Come on, Geralt. Tell me. Be honest. _How’s my singing_?"

Geralt doesn't answer at first, though he does stop moving while he thinks. It's a complicated question to answer, for him, for all that Jaskier isn't really in the right frame of mind for a complicated answer. Jaskier's voice is good, well trained and skillful, always imbued with an extraordinary amount of emotion. But there's something that always feels lacking to it, something that Geralt knows is only lacking to himself. For all that his Viper's voice enthralled him, it was untrained and rough where it now is professional and clear. But there was a weight to his words, born of age or suffering or longing – Geralt isn't sure.

But Geralt shouldn't say any of that, because Jaskier doesn't know enough about himself to understand it. He should just say his voice is fine. It's enough like a compliment that Jaskier will probably accept it.

Unless he wants to be honest? Because Jaskier's voice is _good_ , not just nice. Maybe he'll tell him the truth for once. Just that. Just 'it's good, Jaskier, go away'. He might not believe Geralt means it, but that's not Geralt's problem.

"It's ... like ordering a pie," Geralt starts, and that was _not_ what he intended to say, the metaphor tumbling out of his lips despite the best efforts of his sleep-deprived brain. "And finding it has no filling."

For half a second, that metaphor sounds good in Geralt's ears, even if it's more honest than he intends. Something good, but lacking something additional he craves. 

And then his brain actually catches up to his mouth, and he realizes that actually that sounded extremely insulting, just in time for him to hear Jaskier start to protest, rightly insulted and far too loud for Geralt to process the words, honestly.

And then his words don't matter, because as Geralt pulls the net back in, there's a sealed clay amphora caught in it. 

He doesn't really process most of what happens after that. Suddenly all he can seem to hear is the rushing of blood in his ears, even if reasonably he knows that's not true, because he can feel himself responding to Jaskier's words. Jaskier tries to grab it from him, but it doesn't matter why. He doesn't need anything. He just needs one wish.

Just one.

He has others that he wants so badly, but only one he would actually wish for.

Except Jaskier gets the amphora out of his hands, while Geralt still holds the cork, and the djinn is free, free, free, and Jaskier is making outlandish ridiculous wishes about killing a rival, and bringing his damnedable useless countess back to him naked, and— 

"Jaskier!" he growls, and grabs the bard's doublet to yank him backwards from the edge of the water, ignoring his slightly confused exclamation. "Stop! There are only three wishes."

"Oh, come on," Jaskier protests, irritated - either at having his third wish interrupted or at being manhandled. Knowing Jaskier, probably the latter. "You always say you want _nothing_ from life. So how was I supposed to know you wanted three wishes _all to yourself_?" Jaskier's practically shouting at him by the end of his little tirade, and part of Geralt can't really blame him, given the things Geralt had said only moments before.

But he needs one wish. 

Just one.

Not even to get his Viper back, as much as he misses him. (As much as he _doesn't_ miss him these days, missing the bard instead, and what a kick in the teeth _that_ is.)

"I just want some damn _peace_!" Geralt shouts, frustrated and angry and hurting and so, so fucking _tired_. And Jaskier's response is to screw his face up in a childish scowl.

"Well, here's your _peace_!" he shouts back, just as loud, just as angry, and smashes the amphora against the ground.

The wind picks up, whirling around them, and Geralt crouches to try to gather the pieces of the amphora, uncertain if they'll be important somehow to binding the djinn. Except...

Except.

"Geralt …" Jaskier says, except it's more like a wheeze than anything else, and Geralt frowns, whipping his head around to see Jaskier leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree, a hand pressed to his throat. " _Geralt …_ it’s the djinn ..."

Geralt doesn't wait to find out what Jaskier means, just turns towards the faint cloud of shadow hovering over the lake water and throws an aard into it, driving it away from them. He can faintly see it fleeing over the treetops at the other side of the lake, and feels a wave of relief that they managed to not be attacked by an angry djinn whose amphora was destroyed.

Until that relief is doused with cold fear like a bucket of water over his head as he hears Jaskier gasp for breath and fall to his knees. Geralt is already whipping around and grabbing Jaskier's shoulder to steady him before the bard can tip forward to faceplant in the dirt, and Jaskier grasps at Geralt with one hand and at his throat with the other.

"Jaskier?" Geralt asks, his voice a low growl because his options right now are panic and irritation, and he hopes beyond hope that irritation will win out. Jaskier looks up at him and tries to say something, then doubles over and vomits blood.

Well. Panic it is.

* * *

Yennefer of Vengerberg is simultaneously exactly what Geralt expects her to be and nothing at all like he expects. She's beautiful and mysterious and terrifying and power hungry, yes, but she's also ... curious and scarred and broken in ways that don't match up with Geralt's traumas, he thinks, but are familiar anyway. But ultimately, she helps Jaskier, and he doesn't regret offering any price for it, because standing here in her bedroom, fidgeting with the clothes she gave him and watching Jaskier's chest rise and fall steadily and without difficulty? It's worth it.

He tries not to think about _why_ it's worth it, especially since he's rather sure he hasn't finished repaying her yet, but it is. Jaskier is alive. He is a human, and a bard, and alive. It's everything Geralt wants for him.

"He has a curse on him," she says from behind him, watching him watch Jaskier. "A very strong one. I didn't break it because something like that shouldn't be broken when someone's already healing from a serious magical wound, but after, if you'd like—"

"No," Geralt snaps quickly, turning his head toward Yennefer so she can see his scowl, but not looking away from Jaskier's sleeping form. 

"No?" she asks, her tone curious as she circles around him until she's standing in front of him, looking up into his face thoughtfully. "Why would a witcher want to let his friend remain cursed when he was so _eager_ to save him from a djinn's spell? A curse like this could easily hurt him much worse than dying of this spell ever could have."

"Hmm," Geralt says, tipping his face to hers, only flicking his eyes at the last moment, unwilling to look away from Jaskier's quietly sleeping form for too long. It's not good, to be this attached.

"What are you thinking?" Yennefer murmurs, closing the space between them. She's not _quite_ touching him yet, but he can feel the warmth of her anyway.

"He's better off this way," he says after a moment, glancing back up at the bard before forcing himself to look down at Yennefer instead. "He has what he wanted. I don't want to take that away from him."

She considers him for a long moment. She could take nothing more from him than the questions she's already asked, Geralt knows. Or she could press him into her service and essentially enslave him. Or literally anything in between.

He said 'whatever the price'. He won't back down from that offer. Not when Jaskier's life is on the line.

"Do you think he'll thank you?" she asks curiously. "When he discovers that he's cursed, when he realizes it's been on him long enough I must have known, assuming that I'm not the one _telling_ him." She steps into his space and traces a finger down his jawline. "Why don't you want to break his curse?" she asks quietly. "Why don't you want him to _know_?"

Geralt looks away, his frown deepening. "He was another person," he says finally. "A person he didn't want to be. _This_ is who he wanted to be."

Yennefer hums thoughtfully, and steps away from him to smooth back Jaskier's hair, examining the bard's face. Geralt doesn't like that she's touching him, but he doesn't want to risk pissing off this witch. Not while she's still tied to Jaskier.

"And it wasn't the djinn that made him this way," she murmurs, her thumb running along Jaskier's throat and settling in the space under his chin. "Why does he matter to you?"

"Hmm," is all Geralt says. 

He knows he needs to answer, that he needs to answer honestly, lest Yennefer decide it's too much trouble to keep Jaskier alive after all. 

"Because he _does_ ," Geralt says, irritated and unable to come up with anything better. "Is there anything else I can do for you, _my lady_?" he asks, almost choking on the honorific.

"Hmm," she hums back, smirking. Geralt scowls as she stands and moves across the room to her vanity.

And then he sees the sigil on the floor, and his blood goes cold.

"... Fuck."

* * *

Geralt sees Jaskier alive and all but running outside, and he has to physically stop himself from sweeping the bard up in his arms and kissing him. It takes everything within himself to manage it, and it's a close thing in the end.

Instead, he saves Yennefer and kisses her instead. Fucks her (because there are no poetic descriptions for what they do) in the wake of his wish and nearly dying. She's beautiful and pushes back against him and tastes like apples and copper when he kisses her.

He can feel his wish binding them together. She understands him in some ways that Jaskier no longer can, and he understands her in turn. She's beautiful.

He can lie to himself that he loves her, that it's more than a release valve for things he can't let himself have. Can't let himself _feel_. Their love would be epic, if it existed, like something out of a fairy tale. Seems par for the course for the past two days.

He ignores the smell of dried blood and bergamot and wood polish that comes in from a broken window as they fuck, and pretends, when he finally emerges sated and rested, that he doesn't smell the tang of sadness and jealousy in the air, or see the disappointment under Jaskier's half-hearted smile.

It's for Jaskier's own good, Geralt tells himself that night, and every time they run into Yennefer after, and that sour scent and faked smile return as he leaves Jaskier behind.

It's for his own good. He deserves something better than being drawn back into the life he'd so badly wanted to escape. Geralt should never have gotten involved in the first place, and it's too late to take it back now, but at the very least he won't bind Jaskier to him like that. Even if Jaskier thinks he wants him to.

Even, when Geralt's not lying to himself, if Geralt does too.

After all, Geralt was part of the life Jaskier left behind. Geralt doesn't have the right to drag all that back to him any more than he already has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit y'all this took ages and nearly doubled the length of this fic. HOPEFULLY IT WAS AN ENJOYABLE CHAPTER, EPIC LENGTH ASIDE.
> 
> Many many thanks to everyone who played cheerleader for me whilst writing this, and EXTRA thanks to Dor my wonderful beta who made time in tired painful week to read through this and point out the shit that I accidentally muddled or that didn't make sense. <3
> 
> please by all means, come yell at me about the awful heartaches I'm causing in the comments, and [on tumblr](http://bygodstillam.tumblr.com)! 
> 
> Love you all. <3 hopefully I'll have the next chapter ready by next week but there's _probably_ going to be a longer gap for this next one since it took so long for me to get this chapter finished, but don't worry, I'm working hard :)


	5. but your blood does not bleed red no more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY FOR THE UNINTENDED WEEK OFF. I needed a break to work on a couple other things, apparently. But we're back, baby, and still trucking right along!
> 
> Extra love to Dor for this one bc I know nothing about weapons or fight scenes and he is a glorious and wonderful person and beta.

Jaskier heals over the week after he wakes properly.

His hands stay splinted, but Doran says they were set properly by both himself and a healer, that he should at least be able to use them when the splints come off, if potentially not as ... _dexterously_ as he could before. The other injuries heal. Doran isn't a healer, mostly relies on potions and herbal remedies if anyone in town needs help with a minor illness or injury, but he does his best. 

They discuss his injuries – quietly, so quietly, Jaskier's hearing still sensitive – as Doran checks and either removes or changes the bandages covering his body. There are so many wounds – knife wounds, Doran says, likely poisoned judging by the reluctance to heal. All of them have closed up, more or less, and the even, straight, reddish-pink lines of them litter Jaskier's body.

When he looks in the mirror again a few days after he regains consciousness, he can't even focus on the gold streaks in his blue eyes, or his slit pupils, or the fact that he barely looks twenty-five again, because he's noting the very deliberately mirrored cuts on his forehead, his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. There are matching lines cutting through both eyebrows, and he wonders if the witcher who'd been tortured had been as vain as he is, to have had no scars there to begin with. If he would've been as bothered as Jaskier is by having visible scars when he'd never let anyone so much as breathe a _hint_ of disdain for Geralt, who had a few facial scars already.

It's not that scars are bad. Or ugly. It's just ... difficult to come across as harmless when there's proof that you've survived something that led to you having multiple facial scars.

"It was those cuts that made us think it was torture," Doran says when he catches Jaskier standing unsteadily in front of the mirror, examining himself. "They're too even, too balanced. Normal injuries aren't balanced like that."

"Hmm," Jaskier finds himself humming in response, without anything further. Was the humming a biological witchery imperative, or was he just falling back on Geralt's habits because he didn't have any of his own for when he doesn't really want to talk about anything?

He flutters his hands, not enough to draw attention but enough to soothe just a bit, since he can't fidget with his fingers. It's the closest to his normal fiddling and movement that he can get, in the state he's in.

Doran casts healing spells on him every evening for a week. "I'm not remotely skilled as a magical healer," he says, "but I can cast basic spells that encourage the body to heal quicker as well as any other mage." Which, admittedly, is a very kind and nice sentiment, healing him quicker than what is natural even for a witcher, if it weren't for the fact that the closer he gets to fully healed, the closer he gets to having to decide what the fuck to _do_ once he leaves Doran's cottage. He can't stay forever, but ...

Well.

He's a bard who can't play, can't sing until his throat properly heals from screaming it raw, and is visibly covered in scars, even if he wears his most modest clothing.

Who the fuck will be willing to hire him now?

The cuts are all scarred over and his ribs barely ache by the time Doran unwraps the splints on his hands, at the end of his second week of consciousness.

"These probably could've come off earlier," he admits as he carefully frees Jaskier's left hand. "But I know you're a musician so I wanted to make sure they healed as well as possible."

"I appreciate it," Jaskier says absently. He means it – Doran, for all his faults, has done his best to take care of Jaskier in the wake of ... well, everything. He's been attentive and apologetic and has pulled out a lot of stops to get help that he's already told Jaskier in no uncertain terms that he is _not_ paying him back for, considering how badly he cocked everything up. 

"They'll likely ache for a while as you rebuild the muscles," Doran continues. "And I'm not sure if witcher healing will keep them from aching sometimes in the cold or before a storm or anything like that. But they should be _functional_ , at least."

He removes the last of the splinting, looking Jaskier's hand and fingers over critically before nodding quietly and moving on to the right hand to repeat the process.

While he does, Jaskier flexes his now-free hand carefully, feeling the stiffness in it, seeing how far he can stretch his fingers apart and testing his range of movement, splaying his fingers and looking at them. The joints are a little knobbly where they weren't before, and one of the last joints on one finger seems to have healed slightly crooked, as the tip of it lists slightly to one side when he's sure it didn't before.

"There," Doran says, seeming relieved to see the hands looking more or less in one piece. "Any pain?"

Jaskier silently repeats the flex-and-stretch process with his right hand, noting that neither has remotely the range of motion that he's used to. It's just stiffness from healing and magic and lack of use, he tells himself. And perhaps whoever the witcher was who got himself cursed hadn't had the same amount of flexibility in the first place as Jaskier does. 

Did.

That witcher's body is his, now.

"No pain," Jaskier says after a moment. "They're stiff and there's a sort of low-level ache, but no pain."

"Good, good," Doran says, letting out a huff of air, clearly relieved. "I was rather sure it should be well healed, but, well ..." He purses his lips, and Jaskier grimaces.

"But they were pretty well thoroughly pulverized?" Jaskier offers with a piss-poor attempt at humor.

"More or less," Doran agrees, without any humor at all.

They fall silent for a moment or three, Doran staring out the window, Jaskier looking down at his hands and focusing on Doran's heartbeat to try to keep himself from being overwhelmed. He's not sure if he means physically or emotionally, thinking about it. He's not sure it matters.

* * *

Jaskier lasts two more days before he knows he can't stay with Doran any longer or he'll go absolutely mad.

"I can officially feed and bathe myself now," he tells Doran that night, after taking a blessedly long bath in which he did the best he could to not look at his body. "And you've ... helped more than I would've expected," he admits with a small wry smile. "But I can't stay here."

"I know," Doran says. His voice has an odd tone to it that Jaskier can't quite pinpoint, and there's a confusing scent of something acrid and anxious underneath a warmed-earth sort of relief. 

Jaskier doesn't know what Doran's feeling, but frankly he can't bring himself to try to sort it out. He's feeling some sort of mixed up himself, after all: grateful and bitter and angry all wrapped up into a knot of untranslatable sourness in his chest.

"What will you do?" Doran asks.

Jaskier huffs out a sharp breath that isn't quite a laugh, but isn't quite not one either. He's been thinking about this for two weeks, while he did his best to smother how overwhelming his senses are now and turned everything over in his head. He knows one person who might have some sort of answer for him, who might have known about the curse years ago, after a certain misadventure in Rinde at _least_.

"I'm going to track down a witch," he says simply.

* * *

Jaskier will say this for being a witcher, he thinks as he walks towards the nearest large city: he rarely gets tired anymore. There's an ache of recently healed injuries in his ribs and hands, the tightness of new scars, but the weariness and lingering pain he'd started living with the past few years is gone. His stamina is higher than ever and his muscles seem stronger than they've ever been despite three weeks of bedrest and healing.

It makes sense, of course, being a witcher and all. He can do so many things apparently: walk all day, hear other travelers from a half mile away, go without sleep as long as he spends a bit of time focusing on one sound or smell or sensation – which he assumes must be meditation. 

(He wonders if Geralt ever focused on the scent of him or the sound of his heartbeat or the soft notes of his lute when he'd play quietly in the evenings, then smothers the thought with the ruthlessness of a cuckolded husband. If Geralt ever had, it probably would've been from lack of other acceptable options.)

The only way he appears to be deficient now, aside from his scarring and clear inhumanity should anyone get too close and see his eyes, is when it comes to music.

His voice is going to be a loss for a while, he knows, from screaming himself hoarse, probably more than once, given the likelihood of torture before he was cursed. It's recovered remarkably fast, but it's still not quite at the level of quality Jaskier's used to. (He tries not to think about the possibility that it's just _like this_ now, that there will always be that hint of scratch and roughness to his once-clear voice.) It will recover with time, that he can be sure of, so long as he cares for it now.

No, the real issue is with his lute.

Or, more accurately his inability to _play_ it.

His first night on the road, away from town and on his way west toward the coast, he takes his lute out after he's eaten some jerky and unrolled his bedroll. His hands are still stiff, and he doesn't expect to be able to play long, but he just needs to _check_ , he tells himself, as he sits with his back against a tree trunk.

A first strum of a chord is fine, after he carefully places his fingertips on the frets, not sure his fingers will twist the way he's used to. But then he tries to go to another chord, something that he can do unthinkingly— 

Except he can't. His fingers don't seem to know where they need to land without him looking, and it's been so long since he needed to _think_ about how to play a common chord that he can't actually remember where to put his fingers on the strings at first. 

"You're just a little stressed," he murmurs to himself. "It's fine." He shifts his fingers to the right strings and frets, presses down.

And immediately lets out a choked shout of pain as his hand cramps and spasms from the position he'd tried to twist his fingers into. He barely manages to get the lute set aside mostly in its case and then tries to dig the fingers of his right hand into the meat of his left, the muscles still twitching and aching.

"Fuck shit _cock_!" Jaskier hisses, trying to massage out the cramping muscles without making the muscles in his _other_ hand cramp up. It doesn't work very well, and while his left hand starts releasing a bit, his right hand is starting to twitch a bit like it's ready to cramp if he keeps using it.

He drops both into his lap and lets his head fall back against the tree trunk with a slightly hysterical laugh that turns into a strange shaky mix of laughter and tears after a few seconds. Of course it couldn't be that easy. Fuck.

It takes a few minutes to calm himself down, but once he evens out his breathing, he can pull himself back to rational thought. His hands have been through a lot, the past three weeks. The muscles are likely not in great shape at the moment. He needs to give himself a few days to stretch them and use them for everyday tasks. Even packing his bag before he left Doran's had made them ache – clearly there's a bit more recovery he has to deal with. Knowing witcher healing, he'll probably be ready by next week. It's fine. He'll be fine.

He doesn't manage to get his hands to properly loosen up before he falls asleep, but the cramping has eased by the time he wakes from a nightmare in the wee hours of the morning. He takes it as a good sign, if only because taking it as anything else would probably rip out what's left of his heart at this point. And he can't really afford that.

A week improves the cramping issue, slightly. Not enough for him to feel like it's just a matter of recovery, though, and that worries him. What worries him _more_ , though, is that when he goes to pick out a melody instead of strumming, his fingers ... don't move right. They aren't fast enough, they keep stumbling and tangling together, hitting the wrong strings in the wrong order. He knows exactly what his fingers _should_ be doing, but he can't convince his hand to _do_ what he knows.

He tries again half a week later. If anything, it seems like it's _worse_.

He puts the lute back in its case, and doesn't open it again for weeks.

* * *

Jaskier has enough supplies from Doran (and his newfound ability to go longer without needing things like rest and food) that it's two weeks before he starts thinking about actually stopping in a town to try to get more supplies. He could probably go another week if he supplements with snares and anything he can forage, so now is probably a good time to start trying to find a way to make some money and get supplies. He'd _hoped_ , a bit naively he now sees, that by now he'd be able to play and sing again, and that maybe in dark taverns no one would see the gold in his eyes and the scars wouldn't be too bad. But that slight roughness to his voice shows no sign of dissipating, and he still can't get his hands to do anything too delicate, like, for example, playing the lute.

Instead, he heads into a modestly sized town wearing his plainest trousers (a pair Doran had given him for their looser cut than his own) and shirt and no doublet, all his fine clothes folded neatly at the top of his bag.

He doesn't _want_ to sell them, especially in a town that would undoubtedly not pay him nearly what they're worth even second hand, but at the moment it's the only real way he has to get any money for supplies and maybe a hot meal and a real bed for a night before he keeps moving toward the coast and (he hopes) someone who can get him in touch with Yennefer.

"Excuse me, sir!" he calls to a merchant who's set up a stall in the town square, who looks like he might have the coin and clientele in other locations to want to buy the two doublets and matching trousers that he had spent a fair few crowns on only the past autumn.

The merchant turns to him with that familiar customer-pleasing smile just long enough to see Jaskier's scars and meet his eyes, do a double-take, then scowl. "You try to do a glamour on those eyes of yours, witcher?" he sneered. "Doesn't seem to have taken, you still have devil eyes peeking out past the blue." 

It's a familiar enough tone, to Jaskier. Condescension, hatred, distrust, a tinge of fear under it all. Jaskier's immediately bristling, ready to snap at the man for being so awful to G— 

Except, Jaskier realizes as his irritation rises, the merchant's _not_ being awful to ... to anyone else. He's being awful to _Jaskier_. And Jaskier, as much as he wants to snap back, _can't_. He's not the mediator anymore, he's the target. And if he lashes out, not only is he likely to get run out of town, but he could do irreparable harm to the reputation of the witchers that he'd spent 24 years trying to improve. 

So instead he forces his hackles back down and flashes his most charming, but not-too-wide smile, hoping he doesn't accidentally flash his sharp canines. "I think you're mistaken, good sir," he says. "Witchers, you'll find, tend to carry swords – two, in fact – and wear medallions indicating the school they trained in! As you can see, I have neither medallion nor sword, I'm simply a traveller trying to sell some extraneous valuables so I can purchase more supplies."

The merchant scoffs, and spits at Jaskier's feet. "I don't do business with filthy mutants."

Jaskier clenches his jaw, clutches the strap of his pack and forces a stiff smile onto his face. "I'll let you know if I see one, then, and warn them off," he says, and walks past the merchant's stall and further into the square.

The next merchant turns him away, as does the small tailor's shop tucked in a side street. It's not a large town, they don't _need_ more than one tailor, more than a couple of traveling merchants at the same time. He could try around town in general, but he doubts he'd be able to make enough to be worth it.

Jaskier leaves town before the sun sets, and walks through the night. He might as well – he knows there's no chance in hell he's going to sleep tonight.

* * *

It's a week and a half until Jaskier manages to sell his clothes, for far below their value, but enough to be worth it at this point. He's hungry and exhausted, even with his increased stamina, and while he didn't get as much as he'd hoped and probably shouldn't spend money on luxuries, he is very seriously considering staying the night in an inn, if one in town will allow him.

And they don't overcharge him too badly.

And no one else in the building decides to cause trouble and get him thrown out after paying.

In retrospect, Jaskier thinks with a deep sigh as he turns down an alley to get out of a crowded street, maybe he should just cut his losses and accept that he'll not get a bed or a hot bath for a while. He's unaccustomed to being treated simultaneously like the shit on the bottom of someone's shoe and the most terrifying monster they've ever seen. It's frustrating and it's draining, and he doesn't know if there's any way he can combat it. He doesn't have armor or visible weapons, his eyes are at least half blue, he's not covered in monster guts or dragging a monster's head behind him. He has a _lute case_ on his back for fuck's sake. He should be the least imposing and objectionable witcher on the continent. And yet, people see the scars on his face and look closer, and then they see his eyes properly, and that's that.

The seamstress's shop hadn't been too bad. The woman who owned it had been afraid, certainly, but also professional. Jaskier actually thinks he _might_ have gotten as much as she could afford to pay, for his fine clothes, and he knows she _didn't_ overcharge him for the simple traveling clothes he bought, so there are some _fair_ people in this part of the world, at least. Maybe he can hope the innkeeper will be one of them.

He's almost to the mouth of the alley when two men step into the open space, effectively blocking his path. Julian stops and considers them for a moment, tries to focus on the sounds immediately around him. Scents are still a crapshoot, there's so _many_ and he struggles to disregard the ones that are normal for wherever he is. Sounds are a little easier, as he's already primed to be attentive to sounds, as a musician.

He manages to hear the scuff of footsteps behind him as well, and turns halfway to see two more men coming from the other end of the alley behind him.

Jaskier sighs wearily, then plasters on a smile, flicking his focus between the two pairs as they slowly close in on him. Fuck.

"Gentlemen, how can I assist you this fine evening?" he asks, trying to keep his voice light. "If you're looking for entertainment, I'm afraid I'm not quite up to performing today, but I'm certain we could find a compromise of some sort."

"Four of us an' one of you, _mutant_ ," one of the men drawls. "And you ain't got your swords."

"Ah, I think you've made a bit of a mistake," Jaskier insists. "Seems to be going around these parts. I'm _not_ a witcher, just a b—just a traveller. All right? _Oh_ dear," he blurts abruptly at the end of his attempts at placation as one of the men draws a shortsword, the others following suit with their own weapons. Jaskier notices, absently, that their stances are all absolute _shit_ , and it irritates him that he couldn't even be cornered in an alley by _competent_ thugs.

"We'll have your coin, and some fun," the man says with a cruel grin. "Put a beast like you in your place."

They're closing slowly enough that Jaskier can quickly pull the dagger from his boot and hold it defensively, sliding his pack off his shoulders to afford him more room to move. It's not that he's _particularly_ skilled at fighting with a blade of any sort, but at least he has training with this dagger. He knows how to hold it and what his stance should be, thanks to Geralt's attempts at training him to defend himself. He's used it before in fights, but never for long: never as anything more than a way to hold off a monster long enough for Geralt to get over to him and save him, or a way to warn off drunken cuckolds who just wanted to rough him up a bit. He's been lucky, he knows, since he and Geralt went their separate ways, but he was hoping maybe that luck would hold out a while longer.

Apparently not.

"Don't do this," Jaskier says, half a plea and half a warning, when one of the men closes the distance between them and tries to thrust his sword into Jaskier's gut. Jaskier sees it coming, and for a split second thinks that this is it, this is how he'll fucking die, a witcher who should be able to take on four poorly trained toughs.

But as the blade gets closer, he finds his body acting on instinct. That's not odd in and of itself, because he _was_ expecting to instinctively try to dive out of the way and probably fail. But he doesn't. He uses the dagger to deflect the sword's blade, and sidesteps smoothly to let the swordsman stumble forward when his blade doesn't hit the resistance of his abdomen. He steps around him and pivots in what almost feels like the steps of a dance, and suddenly Jaskier is all but pressed against the man's back. Then, without any conscious thought, he brings his arm around the far side of the man's neck and buries the blade in it, just below the jaw, and pulls it out and steps back before the man even hits the ground.

His heart is beating so fast he almost feels human again, and he bares his teeth in a parody of a grin, letting out a little hiss of air, like an angry cat.

"Anyone else?" he asks, and his voice is low and threatening in a way he's not sure he's ever spoken before.

The other three men are all frozen in place right up until he speaks, wide eyed and reeking of that particular bitter-sour bile smell that Jaskier's started to associate with fear. The sound of his voice seems to shake them from their shock, and all three turn and flee at top speed, one of them leaving behind the club he'd clearly intended to use as a weapon.

Once they're all out of sight, and he loses the sounds of their fleeing footsteps into the sounds of the town's evening activities, he lets himself drop his defensive stance and stand there, breathing heavily – less from the exertion than the fear. Four men jumping him has, traditionally, ended up with him getting the shit kicked out of him and his coin stolen. This time— 

Oh gods.

Jaskier looks down at his hand and the dagger in it. There's blood on the blade and, thankfully, only a few drops that managed to make it onto his shirtsleeve.

There's blood on his dagger. _Human_ blood. There is blood on his dagger.

He raises his eyes from the blade to the still body in front of him, a still-spreading pool of blood soaking into the dirt under it. The same blood as on his dagger. The blood of that body that was, moments ago, a living man.

The dagger falls from Jaskier's hand as he doubles over and vomits. 

He killed a man. He _killed_ a man. He has gone over 40 years of his life and never killed a person, and he was very happy with that statistic. Not a single person. Except now there _is._ There is a single person here, at his feet, dead because of Jaskier's dagger in his neck.

He stays bent over and heaving long after his stomach is empty even of bile, and then stumbles back to lean against the wall and tries to breathe.

"Fuck," he exhales with a slightly hysterical laugh. "Fuck fuck cock shit _balls_ ," he continues vehemently, and honestly the litany of incoherent cursing helps vent some of the adrenaline and terror still bubbling through him, and he lets out a deep, shaky breath.

He's alive. He defended himself. He doesn't know how Geralt would feel about the way he did it, but he knows (thinks, wants to believe) that Geralt would be proud of him for using whatever he had available to protect himself.

Well, realistically it was more that Geralt would be glad to know that Jaskier was still alive to try to fit in the space left behind by someone else, but honestly in the midst of his flagging adrenaline, Jaskier's willing to count that as the same thing if it brings him any semblance of comfort or support.

He clenches his jaw and forces himself to his knees next to the body, avoiding the blood pooling around its head and shoulders, and searches for any money or useful items the man might've had on him. A coin purse reveals only a few copper pennies and a half-crown, and Jaskier tosses the coins into the dirt behind them. Someone more in need than he is will find them, he's sure.

The man also had that short sword, and as much as Jaskier desperately doesn't want to try to use a sword of _any_ sort, short or otherwise, he's not an idiot. He's mostly travelling and camping outside of settlements, and judging by the way he took this man down, there are ... instincts, in this body, that he doesn't remember forming. Skills he never learned that are probably second nature to the person he would be if the curse had been fully lifted.

He manhandles the body (with a single break to gag and heave fruitlessly into the dirt again) enough to remove the belt and scabbard from it, and then picks the sword up from where it fell with the dead man and sheathes it. It's not particularly good quality, even Jaskier can see that, but if he's going to be in danger it's likely better than nothing at all, so he takes it.

He leaves the dagger where it fell, though he leaves the sheath in his boot for now. A dagger may be a good tool to have, but Jaskier knows he won't be able to use that particular dagger again. He may have to kill people again to defend himself, and he is already steeling himself against the possibility, but this ... this he can't stomach. It's the most ridiculous feeling, but he's been suffering for weeks, and he's angry and tired and just _done_ with everything. He won't use this dagger again. This dagger was meant to hold off danger until Geralt could rescue him. Instead, he killed a man and Geralt is nowhere to be seen.

Jaskier sucks in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. He needs to be more careful, and he needs to be prepared. He straps the belt with the sword around his waist, then grabs his pack and shoulders it again, and slips out of the alley.

He won't be stopping by an inn or tavern tonight; he just needs to get as far from this town as possible.


	6. if i'm good will you come back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while, huh? Sorry for the wait, you are all the absolute best.
> 
> While I have edited this chapter to the best of my ability, my darling jackironsides has not been able to take a look at it yet due to RL stuff being nutty, so there may be some minor edits that I'll make once I get his notes back, but I really wanted to get this out and I've gone over it more finely than I usually do on my own, so hopefully it will stand up until then. 
> 
> If any major edits happen, I'll be sure to let you all know when ch 7 goes up, but otherwise it will likely be very minor word choice and syntax edits. Just as a heads up. Also know that any incorrect verb tense issues are my own.

The dragon hunt had been a fucking disaster, for so many reasons, but the biggest one is Yen currently stalking away from him, back to the camp to collect her things.

He's lost her, to a wish and the pretense of a relationship that had never meant as much as he'd tried to pretend. He probably hurt her with that just as much as he did with the wish. He wants to tell Borch off, lie and say that's what he'd been missing, but he can't make the words come.

"What you're missing is still out there," Borch says quietly. "I know it, and you know it."

He doesn't wait for Geralt to respond before following the same path Yen had, back towards the camp and the path down the mountain. Geralt sighs, as he hears the footsteps of one of those things he's missing come up behind him.

" _Well_ ," Jaskier says, sounding both resigned and a little angry, "good riddance, if you ask me. Not like she ever seemed to make you hap—"

"Jaskier, can you fucking be quiet for _once_ in your life?" Geralt snaps, because while he may not love Yen the way he's spent years trying to convince himself he did, he cares about her, and it hurts to have her walk away so angry. "Give me five _fucking_ minutes, at least?"

Geralt hears Jaskier's teeth clack shut, and for a moment, he thinks that while his response might've been too harsh, maybe Jaskier's going to listen and give him a few minutes, at least, before he starts disparaging Yen to Geralt's face.

Except then the wind shifts and he can smell Jaskier and he's— 

He's _angry_.

"You know what?" Jaskier says behind him, his voice flat. "I'm done."

Geralt turns sharply, frowning, eyes searching Jaskier's usually expressive face and only finding icy stillness and anger flashing in his eyes. "What—"

"I'm. _Done_ ." Jaskier repeats, and his whole _body_ is tensed almost to the point of trembling, like he's restraining himself from lashing out, and Geralt's not sure what's happening or why or how to fix it. 

"I don't understand," Geralt says, as steadily as he can. 

Jaskier barks out a laugh that sounds like nothing Geralt's heard from him, neither one of him, bitter and angry and completely humorless.

"I've hit my bloody _limit_ ," Jaskier snaps. "I've spent twenty-two years trailing after you and ... and being _second fucking best_ to whoever it is I remind you of. Yes," he says, bright and biting, "I know you're trying to replace someone you lost. I know you're not fucking over it and I know I don't quite fit, but hey, I'm _good enough_ , right?"

"Jaskier, that's not—"

"I'm not _fucking finished_ , Geralt!" Jaskier shouts, and Geralt falls silent. 

Jaskier can't _really_ feel this way. He can't. Not when Geralt loves him so much it aches. Can he?

"I followed you for _twenty-two years_ ," Jaskier says again. "I knew I wasn't the person you wanted, but I'd already damn well fallen for you, and I was willing to accept whatever _scraps_ I could get from you. Hated myself a bit for it, if I'm being honest, but everything still seemed _better_ with you." He laughs again, humorlessly, and Geralt can smell the salty tang of tears even if they haven't fallen yet. This isn't how it's supposed to be. This is _wrong_.

"But you know what? I'm _done_ ," Jaskier continues, finally beginning to tremble from how tense his muscles are. Geralt can only listen mutely, his heart racing and threatening to choke him. "You only put up with me because of what you lost and aren't ready to let go of. Fuck _that_. I followed you, I _loved_ you, for two bloody decades, and you won't look at me twice, but _Yennefer_ you chase after and pine for, despite the fact that you're always in a foul mood after you run into her. And I—"

Jaskier cuts himself off and lets out a deep breath, and the scent of hot rage fades into something more sharp and cold. "I'm done making excuses to myself for you," he says finally. "I'm done putting up with the way you push me away but never let me leave. I'm done with being a replacement for someone else. I'm just ... _done_."

He sounds defeated, exhausted in a way Geralt doesn't recognize and doesn't know how to fix, and Geralt steps forward, half reaching out and then stopping himself. He doesn't have a right to comfort Jaskier if he's made him feel like this. His stupid, _selfish_ desire to protect someone he loved and help him keep the life he'd wanted had, ultimately, made Jaskier feel _unloved_. Geralt doesn't know how to undo it. 

"Jaskier," he murmurs, helpless to think of anything else to say.

"Just ... just _don't_ ," Jaskier says, stepping back. "I don't need your pity and your scraps. I took that for two decades, and I'm just ... done letting that be enough." 

" _Jaskier_ ," Geralt repeats, more desperately, trying to hold on to the shreds of their friendship, the friendship he's grown to actually treasure on its own merits, no matter what his bard thinks.

Jaskier shakes his head and turns to walk away. "Goodbye, Geralt," he says.

"It was you!" Geralt blurts out after him as soon as he can get his mouth to move. Jaskier freezes in his tracks. "It ... it was _always_ you," Geralt says, still loud enough to be heard, but softer. He can't explain how, but he wills Jaskier to hear how much he means this, how true it is.

But Jaskier just laughs, bitterly. "It was _never_ about me," Jaskier says without turning, and starts walking again.

Geralt manages to keep his legs from giving out under him until Jaskier's over the crest of the hill and out of sight.

* * *

Geralt stays there for nearly four hours, making sure his temper is under control, and giving Jaskier some time to cool off and possibly start writing a scathing song about him. This isn't their first fight, even among the years Jaskier can remember. If he gives Jaskier some time to calm down, they'll be all right, and Geralt can make sure that they stay in more inns for the next few weeks, to make up for everything.

Jaskier may have blown up at Geralt and not let him explain anything, but Geralt had snapped first, and he's been the one who apparently hasn't been covering his feelings about who Jaskier used to be as well as he'd thought. He's got a lot to apologize for, and he's already forgiven Jaskier's harshness. Geralt can't imagine what it must feel like to think you're being used that way.

He gets back to the camp where they'd slept last night, where his pack and bedroll are still sitting as he left them, expecting to find Jaskier there waiting. Angry still, in all likelihood, for the way Geralt had snapped at him, but waiting nonetheless. But he's not there, his bedroll is gone, his lute is nowhere to be found. Geralt scowls down at the empty spot where the bedroll had been, then checks the pack to see if any of Jaskier's things are gone. There are some rations missing, and Jaskier's canteen, but nothing else. They'd only brought one pack up the mountain, and most of their things are down the mountain with Roach, though, so the spare shirt that Jaskier's left behind isn't exactly surprising.

Geralt can understand Jaskier's desire for space, even if it makes him anxious. There are admittedly few predators in the woods, as far as he can tell, scared off by the presence of the dragon and not yet given a chance to move back in. Jaskier will most likely be fine if he sticks to the path down the mountain, so while Geralt wants nothing more than to stride down as quickly as he can, catch up with the bard and force him to stay near for safety ... he can't justify it. Most days he'd do it anyway, but today ...

He sighs and rubs a hand wearily over his face. He's fucked up so many things in his life, he can only hope that he hasn't fucked this one up too badly to repair. 

It takes no time at all, really, to gather his pack and re-wrap his swords to head down the mountain himself. Forcing himself to move slowly is frustrating and stressful, but he has no desire to _accidentally_ overtake Jaskier on their way down. If Jaskier wants him to catch up, he'll stop and wait, Geralt reasons, and otherwise it will be better if he has the time to talk out his feelings - the way he's so prone to, in this life - without Geralt close enough to overhear.

He doesn't sleep, but it's hardly a trial. It's only for a few days, after all.

* * *

Even with his slowed pace, he can tell he's catching up to Jaskier by the third day, the bard's scent faint on the air ahead of him. He takes a break around midday that normally he wouldn't bother with, lets the familiar scent of Jaskier (and his softly-scented oils) fade again before beginning the last leg down to Roach.

Jaskier's scent is thick around Roach when he reaches her in the golden light of early evening at the base of the mountain, munching on hay that had, as promised, been brought for the horses of the dragon hunters. The dwarves' ponies are gone, of course, and the horses of the Reavers and Sir Eyck are nowhere to be seen, though their packs are scattered as if they've been thoroughly rifled through.

But despite the thick scent of Jaskier in the area and on Roach's fur, there's no sign of the bard himself, as Geralt scans the area with growing concern.

And, as Geralt looks to Roach's gear piled neatly nearby, there's no sign of Jaskier's pack, either.

Geralt doesn't panic, though. If only Jaskier's things are missing, that means Jaskier's the one that took them. It's fine. He's still angry and probably wants a bath and a drink, and he'll be in town at the inn where this whole disastrous hunt started. Geralt just needs to be patient and calm, get Roach ready to head out, and catch up with Jaskier there.

Everything's going to be fine.

* * *

Jaskier is not at the inn.

Jaskier isn't even in the _town_.

Geralt is alone again.

* * *

Geralt has to restrain himself from following Jaskier out of town. Stalking him wasn't likely to win Geralt any favours, nor was forcing his presence on the other man. They've travelled separately before many times, after all. Geralt _knows_ that even as a bard, Jaskier is capable of taking care of himself in most situations.

"He'll be back," he tells Roach quietly when he greets her the next morning without Jaskier and the sugar lumps Geralt knows he's been slipping her. They've always found each other again after being apart. When Jaskier's ready, they'll find each other again, and Geralt can apologize. Try to explain without telling him _everything_. And until then, Geralt can be patient.

Travelling alone is miserable enough at the best of times, but knowing that his loneliness is his own fault makes it worse. He takes contracts, kills monsters, gets paid. There's a worrying lack of familiar melodies on people's tongues for a few weeks, but then Geralt starts hearing Jaskier's songs hummed by travellers again, and the tension in his chest loosens just slightly.

The bard is alive, and still singing his songs about the heroism of witchers. Even if he's angry, all isn't lost. Geralt hasn't completely ruined their friendship yet. It's enough to keep him from searching Jaskier out, to let Jaskier be the one to decide when he wants to reconnect.

For now.

He goes back to Kaer Morhen for the winter, for the first time in two decades. Geralt had never been able to shake the fear that he'd come back down and find that Jaskier had disappeared again, but he wasn't going to make the bard keep travelling in snow and cold, so instead he'd weathered winters alone. 

He's still afraid, trekking up the narrow path into the mountains, that when the passes clear Jaskier will be gone. But he's giving the bard space, and wherever he's settled for the winter is unlikely to be wiped out the way witcher keeps have been. Jaskier will be fine. 

Geralt probably should've been expecting the welcome he gets when he rounds the last curve in the path. Lambert's up on the wall, and he lets out a sharp whistle that echoes up the mountains, and Eskel is charging out the gates before Geralt even has a chance to set foot on the bridge over the moat. He's already dismounted by the time Eskel reaches and barrels directly into him, pulling him into possibly the tightest hug Geralt's had since he survived the second round of the Grasses when they were kids.

"Fucking hell, Wolf," Eskel says, his voice rough as he presses their foreheads together, his fist tight in the hair at the nape of Geralt's neck. "Couldn't have come back a little sooner?" 

Geralt's hand comes up to hold tight to the back of Eskel's neck without even thinking about it, clinging to his brother like he's the only thing keeping him lashed to shore in a storm.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

They stand there for a long minute that Geralt is surprised isn't interrupted by Lambert, at least, before he can manage to let go of Eskel so they can move into the courtyard. Once they've passed through the gate, Eskel takes Roach's reins without a word just in time for Lambert to greet Geralt. Unlike Eskel, Lambert greets him with a very emphatic punch to the jaw that Geralt figures he deserves.

"What the _fuck_ , asshole?" Lambert demands, punching Geralt again in the arm before pulling him into a hug nearly as tight as Eskel's. "Two _fucking_ decades, really?"

"Sorry," Geralt repeats, wrapping his little brother in a tight hug. And he is, more abruptly than he would've expected. He's sorry for his absence in a way he hadn't been since that fateful day in Posada, because he suddenly can't help but imagine how he'd feel if he'd been in their shoes. Can't help but think of how thoughtless it was of him to not come back even a couple of times to reassure them. There's only the four of them left, of the wolf school, after Remus was killed by the striga, and Geralt should've brought Remus's medallion back himself instead of sending it in a package to wait at the foot of the mountain for one of his brothers to pick up before making the trip up for the winter. Geralt should've written more. Geralt should've come _back_.

"Yeah, you better fucking _well_ be sorry, you piece of shit," Lambert mutters into his shoulder, clinging for a moment longer before shoving him back. "You're fucking _in for it_ with Vesemir, you know, hope you like running the wall until you collapse."

"Eh," Geralt grunts with a shrug. "I deserve it, probably."

Lambert snorts and rolls his eyes, but heads off towards the stables where Eskel had taken Roach, likely to give a bit of privacy to Geralt and Vesemir, who was walking down from the keep proper.

"Vesemir," Geralt starts to say as the older witcher stalks purposefully towards him, intending to apologize, but he isn't given a chance before he's wrapped in a third, and less expected, tight hug.

"You're not to do that again, boy," Vesemir says, gruff and firm as always. He lets go quickest, but keeps his hands on Geralt's shoulders. "You need to make an appearance at least once a decade, preferably more. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," Geralt says.

Vesemir lets out a deep sigh that seems to rise from the deepest core of him, hands tight on Geralt's arms. "It's been a long couple of decades, even by our standards, hasn't it?" he asks knowingly. Geralt doubts Vesemir could possibly know _exactly_ why, but he nods in agreement, because it really has been.

Something in Geralt's chest settles into place that he hadn't realized was _out_ of place, being here with his family all in one piece and one place. He should've come back years ago.

"You get tonight to rest and settle back in," Vesemir says, and starts striding back up to the keep, Geralt falling in step like he hasn't been gone for twenty-two years. "Tomorrow, you train, you help with repairs, all of it. And you'll be getting the jobs your brothers don't want, seeing as how you've skived off two decades worth of them."

"Yes, sir," Geralt responds, abashed, but has a hard time being upset.

Despite all his misgivings about staying away from the world for the whole season, it's unbearably good to be home.

* * *

His family all realize something is wrong, but their attempts to help are varied.

"I'm not doing feelings talk," Lambert tells him the day after he arrives while they work on checking the boarded-up windows in an unused part of the keep, to try to prevent as much draftiness as possible.

"All right," Geralt agrees.

"There's clearly some shit going on, but I don't want anything to do with it," Lambert continues.

"Never asked you to," Geralt points out.

"I'm just _saying_ ," Lambert insists. "But if you wanna get drunk, I've got special vintages I'm willing to break out if you ask real nice."

Lambert's 'special vintages' will probably knock Geralt on his ass for two full days, judging by how bad his usual brews have always been (or at least they were up until twenty-two years ago, after which point Geralt doesn't have any data to work from), but honestly Geralt thinks he might have to take his little brother up on the offer.

"Thanks, Lambert," Geralt says, without a hint of irony. Lambert doesn't punch him for it, but Geralt doesn't push his luck with Lambert's ability to handle emotions other than anger by saying anything else.

Still, it's comforting to know that Lambert still gives a shit after how long Geralt stayed away.

Vesemir doesn't say anything directly, which Geralt is grateful for. He's not sure he'd be able to hold in the parts of the story that he doesn't want to share, if Vesemir asked, but he doesn't ask and Geralt doesn't say anything. But Vesemir does make a few dishes that he knows Geralt to be particularly fond of, for supper, and gives Geralt a few unnecessary but very appreciated words of praise after training or chores now and then.

Eskel pulls him back into their familiar routines, complete with plenty of physical contact and affection. Geralt loves it and hates it all at once, grateful for the comfort and burning with grief and longing because he wants it to be _Jaskier_.

Even twenty years isn't _nothing_ to a witcher, especially when there's only the four of them left of the wolves of Kaer Morhen, but Eskel doesn't push, doesn't ask. When Geralt can't sleep and he finds himself hesitating in the hallway in front of Eskel's door, Eskel opens the door and pulls Geralt in with nothing but a soft, "Come sleep, Wolf." It nearly breaks Geralt for a moment, 'wolf' as a nickname was always something Eskel and Jaskier had shared once upon a time (however unintentionally), and it makes Geralt _ache_ , but then he's bundled under Eskel's furs with his brother's arm slung around his waist, and everything is, somehow, all right. Until sunrise, anyway.

It takes until just after midwinter before they get drunk enough for him to talk about it at all.

"I fucked up," he says, frowning at his glass of vodka during a lull in Lambert and Eskel trading stories back and forth. Lambert sighs sharply and stands abruptly enough to nearly tip his chair over. 

"Special vintage," is all he spits before stalking out towards the storage space he keeps his brews in. Eskel shoots an amused look after him and shakes his head.

"Thank the gods some things never change, huh?" he asks Geralt with a faint smile.

"Yeah," Geralt says.

Lambert returns with two bottles of one of his brews, something brownish and slightly cloudy, and three new cups so the taste of his usual moonshine wouldn't get in the way.

"I've been _saving_ this, so your maudlin ass better fucking be grateful, pretty boy," Lambert says to Geralt as he fills the three glasses and pushes them towards his brothers. Eskel and Geralt share a dubious look and taste their drinks at the same time.

Shockingly, the brew does _not_ taste or smell like acid or turpentine, but is a rather smooth, oaky liquor that Geralt thinks is probably spiked with white gull but manages to cover the taste of it quite well. He also thinks it's probably significantly stronger than it tastes.

"Fucking hell, Lambert, this is _good_ ," Eskel says, surprised. "Didn't think you had it in you."

"Yeah, yeah," Lambert says, trying and failing not to obviously preen under the appreciation and praise. "Just 'cause I don't pull out the stops making moonshine for your classless asses doesn't mean I can't do better."

"Should share this shit with that Cat you're sweet on," Geralt says absently. "Bet he'd like it."

Lambert and Eskel both freeze and share a look, and Geralt realizes it's been two decades. There's every chance Lambert's moved on. Or that said Cat had gotten slow. _Fuck_.

"Little more than just _sweet_ on him, these days, aren't you Lambs?" Eskel finally says, taking another sip of his drink, and Lambert shrugs awkwardly and ducks his head. Geralt's never been more relieved to see Lambert bashful and awkward.

"Fuck off," he declares, and points at Geralt. "We're here so Geralt can spill his guts or whatever, so fucking _spill_."

Geralt sighs, and takes a long drink from his glass, focusing on the way the hint of white gull makes the firelight in the corner of his eye refract a bit instead of the way he almost wants to throw himself off one of the towers for being such a horrible friend to the person he loves most in the world.

"The bard," he says eventually. "The _Toss A Coin_ bard. It ... he reminded me of ..." He doesn't say Jaskier's name. Doesn't mention his Viper, but there's a wordless rumble of understanding from Eskel and a frown from Lambert. They know what he means, and Geralt is struck again by how _easy_ it is to be with his brothers again, even after all this time. It's exactly what his relationship with Jaskier _wasn't_ all this time, despite his love.

"What happened?" Eskel prompts, and refills Geralt's glass.

"I'd ... been filling that space with him," Geralt says. "Wanting him to be someone he wasn't." He fiddles with the glass and lets out a huff of humorless laughter. "Not by the end, but it'd been so many years, he ... didn't realize I wanted him to stay for his own sake. And I snapped at him. Pushed him away. So he left."

"... Well, fuck him for not seeing how much you cared, then," Lambert says after a long silence. "You'll find someone better."

Geralt knows it's meant to be comforting, but it isn't. It isn't because Lambert doesn't know that the reason he'd put the bard in that position was because he _was_ the Viper, that he _was_ the person Geralt had been grieving last time they saw him.

He tosses back the rest of his drink in one go and stands up. "Going to bed," he rumbles as he goes. "Thanks for the drink, Lambert."

* * *

"His name is Jaskier," Eskel says from his doorway, one night before the pass clears.

Geralt freezes, then tries to keep working on the last-minute repairs of his armor. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your _bard_ ," Eskel clarifies, moving into his room and closing the door. It won't stop a determined eavesdropper, but it's a clear enough move, for Kaer Morhen, to indicate a desire for privacy. "I've heard about him, over the years. His name is Jaskier."

"So it is," Geralt agrees, because ... well, it's true. He can't really argue that.

Eskel sighs deeply. "Did _you_ encourage that stage name?" he asks, more quietly and gently than before. "I can't say I'd blame you, but Geralt—"

"I didn't ask him to use that name," Geralt snaps, his hands fisting in the gambeson he was folding. "I ... I didn't _ask_ ," he repeats, more gently.

Because he didn't. It wasn't his choice. Frankly, he wished Jaskier had gone by the name he'd manufactured for this fiction, this _Julian Pankratz_ , but he never did, and so it was always Jaskier, Jaskier, _Jaskier_ , until he was ready to collapse and weep.

"Okay," Eskel allows. "I just ... with what you said, I just wanted to make sure ..."

"I know," Geralt whispers. "He was Jaskier before I ever met him," he says, and it's true and misleading all at once. He could at least tell Eskel that his bard had been Jaskier since before he had _memory_ , but ... well. He was terrified that the knowledge would somehow burn Jaskier from existence. That the truth of Jaskier's existence would ruin everything.

The way _Geralt_ ruined everything.

"Okay," Eskel repeats, squeezing Geralt's shoulder. "You ... you should find him, though. Apologize. I can tell you miss him."

"Yeah," Geralt agrees, and leans into the contact. "Yeah."

* * *

He tries. He really, truly tries to find Jaskier after he leaves Kaer Morhen in the spring.

He'd initially and unrealistically expected Jaskier to at least be somewhere _near_ the Blue Mountains, at first. Geralt had never told either Jaskier precisely where Kaer Morhen was, but he'd allowed enough knowledge to his Viper that he could find Geralt easily come spring. It's ... _unsettling_ , to say the least, when there's no word of a bard anywhere near the base of the mountains when the snows melt, even if there's no reason for him to expect to find Jaskier nearby.

Geralt's plan is, eventually, to head towards Oxenfurt. He's not sure if Jaskier would go back there for any extended amount of time, but maybe they'll have heard news of him more recently than, say, Silverstrand at the Redanian border had.

Except that he still has to take contracts if he wants to survive, and that slows him down. And by the time he's closing in on Oxenfurt, there are rumors of Nilfgaardian forces moving on Cintra.

Rumors with _weight_.

And Geralt knows that even if he finds Jaskier, if he lets his child surprise be murdered by Nilfgaard, Jaskier will never forgive him for it. It's funny - he'd never really _discussed_ the child with Jaskier, but he has no doubt whatsoever that Jaskier would sooner turn his back on him than forgive him for abandoning the child he'd unwittingly bound to his destiny fourteen years ago.

It goes against every instinct in Geralt's bones, to turn away from the chance of finding Jaskier again, but he knows with every step he takes that it's the right choice.

He just hopes Jaskier will survive long enough to acknowledge it, and forgive him for the delay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got stuck on writing this until the inimitable [KHansen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHansen/pseuds/KHansen) mentioned she was re-reading the posted chapters and sparked my own re-read and reminded me that as of ch. 4, Geralt had not spent a single winter at Kaer Morhen since meeting Jaskier in Posada, so you can and should all thank her for the Wolf School content in this chapter. Maybe do it by reading some of her fics and leaving comments, because they're fantastic.
> 
> (and I'm serious about the verb tenses, I edited this like three times and I didn't notice the entire last scene was in past tense until I was doing one last formatting read through just before I posted this, I am a mess without Dor's input)
> 
> I'm no longer assuming I'll be able to get chapters out on a schedule, but even though I won't be taking classes this fall, my wife will be, so hopefully I'll be able to scrape together some sort of routine that will make writing time a little smoother. :) Next chapter is, if my outline can predict things, probably going to be close to the length of chapter 4 (longest chapter to date, over 8k words), so it might be a fair bit before I get it out.
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking around and for your kind kind words. Honestly some of the lovely comments I've been getting in the little break since ch 5 went up kept me going when this chapter was being so difficult, and I can't express how much each and every one of you mean to me.
> 
> I hope this was worth the wait!


	7. the muttering of all your fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier makes his way to Aretuza to try to get help from Yennefer.
> 
> The road there is _not_ an easy one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, 2020's just crazy, y'all. Hope this was worth the wait. I'm already working on the next one.
> 
> Thank you eternally to jackironsides and teamfreehoodies for being fabulous betas, and to the BoG discord for cheerleading so enthusiastically.

Jaskier has been driven out of towns before, more than once.

Sometimes just for having slept with the wrong person's spouse, sometimes the townsfolk were a bit more puritanical than he'd expected and hadn't taken kindly to him flirting with their young people. A handful of times it had been because of Geralt, with Jaskier following and spitting obscenities and insults behind them.

Getting driven out of a tiny village east of Vizima with literal pitchforks, stones pelting his back and the back of his head, simply for stepping into the market in search of some thread so he could mend his shirt, is a new low.

If he had a horse, he would sigh and speak his frustrations to it, but he doesn't have a horse. No horse, no companion, just himself and the dirt road and the throb above his ear where a particularly sharp rock had cut him when it hit.

"Well, we're deep in it and no mistake, aren't we Geralt?" he murmurs. His internal Geralt hasn't had a response for him in weeks, no matter how desperately he wants to have even an imaginary conversation, and all Jaskier can do is just keep moving.

It's not what he wants to be doing. He _wants_ to be settling in taverns and inns and the odd whorehouse, playing songs and singing for his supper. But instead, he's lucky to be allowed to enter town at all, if this latest experience is any indication. And even if he were allowed to stay, he can't play more than a couple of chords in a row before his hands refuse to hold their positions.

He's barely scraping by, and he needs to be able to get a job of some sort. Since he was cornered in that alley, Jaskier admits he's considered taking a contract or two, but the biggest issue he's run into is that he doesn't have a silver sword, and certainly can't afford to buy one.

But his coin purse is empty and his stomach feels like it's turning inside-out from hunger, and he can't risk taking a contract on something he thinks he can handle only to get himself eaten because he doesn't have a silver sword or the ability to set them on fire.

He can't fix the lack of knowledge of how to use witcher signs, but he _can_ fix his lack of a silver sword, if he's lucky and willing to make a sacrifice.

He doesn't want to, but he takes a deep breath and heads to Vizima with his blood drying in his hair.

* * *

The shop Jaskier finds in Vizima seems high-end enough that they'll likely be able to handle this transaction with as little loss to him as possible. It's the perfect choice, outside of perhaps Oxenfurt or Novigrad, for a place to do this. It's just that he doesn't really _want_ to.

"It's this or starving," he reminds himself under his breath, and steps inside. The little bell over the door rings, catching the attention of the shop owner near the back of the shop.

"Yes, yes, how can I help you?" the man calls as Jaskier moves further in towards his counter and workspace. The shop owner's smile falters when Jaskier gets close, taking in the scars and the slit-pupiled eyes nervously, the sour smell of his fear rising up under the smell of wood and gut.

Jaskier puts his case down on the counter, opens it, and lifts his lute out.

"I was hoping to sell this," he says quietly, not looking at the man, whose eyes have gone wide. It wasn't the most elaborately-designed lute either of them had ever seen, not even the most elaborate in this shop, but there was no doubt it was among the most beautiful.

"This is a beautiful piece," the luthier breathes. "Where did a witcher come by an instrument like this?"

Jaskier tries (and fails) to keep from wincing at the question, swallowing hard.

"It was a gift," he says roughly. "It's elven make, lightly enchanted. I saw it in use on the road for two decades, it holds its tune better than it should, has seen little significant damage, despite rough living."

"This was a handsome gift, then," the luthier says, and Jaskier is grateful, at least, to have found someone with a true appreciation for his craft, not someone who would try to play down its rarity and cheat him. The man reached out for it. "May I?"

Jaskier nods, feeling something in his chest crack when the man pulls a simple but delicate melody out of it, something Jaskier can't manage to do anymore. It's the whole reason he even allowed himself to entertain the idea of doing this.

"Are you certain you wish to part with this?" the luthier asks when he's finished assessing the quality of the tone.

Jaskier forces a tight smile onto his face. "A witcher doesn't have any use for a lute," he says, and the words feel like they're burning his tongue even as he speaks them. He's not a witcher, not really, but he may as well be as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

He's certainly not a bard anymore.

"Well, you have certainly made my day, Witcher," the luthier says. "Shall we discuss price?"

Jaskier leaves the luthier's shop a quarter hour later, significantly richer than he'd been when he entered, with an ache in his chest that he can't quite put a name to. It feels life-shattering. He has no idea how old he is, but he's too old and too poor to drink himself into oblivion this time.

So he picks himself up, dusts himself off, and keeps moving.

* * *

With the money from the sale of Filavandrel's lute, Jaskier manages to scrape up just enough to have his existing sword _plated_ with silver. He knows it's not ideal, from one of Geralt's rare talkative spurts - the corrosive properties of some of the oils and monster ichors can eat away at the silver plating over time, making the sword less effective and requiring more upkeep than a proper silver sword that was forged and treated specifically for monster hunting. But Jaskier doesn't have access to a witcher's forge or methods, nor the money to pay for it if he did.

He _also_ , unfortunately, finds that he doesn't have enough money after getting the sword silver-plated for any sort of _armor_. It's fine, though. He already hadn't planned to take anything more difficult than a small pack of drowners. He knows those can be overwhelming if there's too many of them, but he thinks the sword skills he has are enough to handle three or four.

Probably.

He manages to find a notice board in a little town just outside of Vizima with a contract that looks perfect.

_Drowner near river been interfering with drawing water._

_Reward with proof of kill._

_See Master Derrik at the tavern for information or pay._

Jaskier pulls the paper off the notice board and nervously runs his tongue over the edges of his teeth. He's a witcher, at least to all outward appearances. This is the sort of person these people are _looking_ for. He knows from two decades of familiarity with Geralt's life that they may still be antagonistic, or refuse to pay, or any number of things he hopes won't happen, but they won't turn him away from the job, and as long as he thinks they're likely to follow through with the reward, it's probably worth the risk.

He needs the money, yes, but he needs the sense of purpose just as much, if he's honest with himself.

"Right," he murmurs to himself. "You can do this. It's just stage fright, you know how to get past that."

He hasn't lied so blatantly to himself in a long time, but if it works, he'll be one step closer to managing to keep himself alive long-term.

Jaskier squares his shoulders, tries to hold himself strong and wide rather than trying to come across as small and unthreatening, and walks into the tavern.

There aren't many people there this time of day - most anyone who'd come in for a meal at midday has finished and gone back to whatever work they have to do - but the room still manages to fall silent and still when Jaskier enters.

He bites back the urge to act the reassuring fool as he had for Geralt for years, and just walks to the bar and puts down the notice in front of the tavernkeeper.

"Looking for Master Derrik," he says, trying to sound confident. This is just like performing at a competition or festival. He can fake the confidence until he feels it.

It's fine.

"Aye, that's me," Derrik says with a nod, and the tension in the room releases slightly. "You here to help, witcher?"

"With any luck, yes," Jaskier says. "Is there only the one drowner?"

"Best as we can tell without losing another lad to it." Derrik sighs. "Look, we're starting to get desperate here. We don't have anyone to spare, we only have one well in town, and Nilfgaard's still moving north and we don't know if they'll make it up here or if the town'll be left in its wake. We aren't able to offer much for it, but it's all we can spare these days."

It's a familiar story. One he's seen Geralt give in to more than he would ever acknowledge. Jaskier _wants_ to be as generous, to kill the drowner and leave unpaid, or underpaid.

But everyone's struggling these days, and Jaskier can't remember the last time he slept in a bed or had a full stomach, at this point.

(He can, though - it was the last night he'd spent in Doran's bed, the last meal he'd eaten at Doran's table. But he doesn't want to think about that right now, when he needs to be confident and self-assured, at least in front of the townspeople.)

"Where's the spot it's found?" he asks, not directly acknowledging the request for help in the face of too small a reward, but not ignoring it, either. He'll take their money, but he won't demand to be paid appropriately for the service. It only seems fair, anyway; they're expecting a professional, not ... Jaskier.

"East side of town, there's a little footpath past the east fields." Derrik points in the general direction, and Jaskier nods.

"I'll be back with its head or not at all," he says, turning and heading back out the door. "Hopefully the former," he adds under his breath as a half-formed prayer.

* * *

It is _not_ one drowner.

It's not even _three_ drowners.

It is three drowners and a thrice-damned _water hag_.

Jaskier thinks he has, potentially, made a mistake by taking this contract, as he swipes and twists and somehow manages to both avoid harm but also avoid landing any solid hits. He has no potions, he doesn't know how to cast signs, and instead of _attacking_ , he feels like he's entirely on the defensive, simply blocking and parrying instead of making any progress.

"Fuck fuck _fuck_!" He tries to twist away from a drowner's swiping claw and manages to get a face full of mud, lobbed by the water hag. Yes, this was _definitely_ a mistake and it'll be the last one he makes because he is going to die the most ignoble death of any witcher in the history of _time_ , as he tries to scramble backwards and wipe bloody _river_ _mud_ out of his eyes.

"You're really not helping boost my confidence here," he grits out as he smears enough mud away just in time to _see_ as one of the drowners manages to get its teeth on his free arm. It hurts less than Jaskier expected, but it's still sharp and distracting, and the only benefit to the situation is that the drowner holds still long enough for Jaskier to get his sword up and slice down diagonally through the its neck and torso, enough that the thing gurgles and drops to the ground. It very nearly takes Jaskier's sword with it, but Jaskier thankfully manages to pull it free with only a minimum of awkward squelching.

The pain seems to be helping center himself, though, which is an unexpected side-effect that he'll be thinking over later, when he's not at risk of dying. Jaskier pulls his lips back in a snarling grin, and throws himself at the remaining two drowners in the hopes that his wildly unpredictable muscle memory and instincts will carry him through into attacking rather than defending, if he leans into it.

Thankfully for him, and his continued existence, his ploy works, and he does his best to not think as he pushes one drowner back with a kick before turning on the other and taking off its head in one smooth swing. The sound of the third drowner coming back for him has Jaskier's mind screaming _turn around turn around!!!_ but his body has a different plan, and simply reverses his grip on the sword and drives it backwards just under his armpit before _finally_ turning and dragging the sword up and ultimately _out_ of the last drowner, neatly bisecting it from the chest up to its neck.

Jaskier stands over the body as it falls with a triumphant grin - the triumph winning out narrowly over sheer _relief_ \- breathing possibly a bit more heavily than is actually warranted, and wanting to revel a bit in his victory before taking the heads back to town.

And revel he does, for the few seconds it takes for him to _miss_ the sound of the water hag getting closer, until it rakes its claws up the side of his thigh with a screech.

 _Fuck_. He'd forgotten the water hag. Shit, fuck, _bollocks_. He's starting to see why Geralt communicated in profanity so often. Jaskier's hand spasms from the unexpected pain, and his sword falls from his grip as he stumbles forward. He trips slightly over his feet while turning to face the hag with a grimace; he's weaponless and bleeding a lot more than he's personally comfortable with, and he doesn't like his current chances.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me a default and let me go?" he asks the hag, who just screeches again and darts forward, clearly intending to finish him off. He ducks under its arms, planning to make a run for it, but instead drops into a roll past her, coming to his feet with his sword in his hand again.

"Huh, that's handy," he mutters to himself, only blinking at the sword in shock _once_ before focusing on the hag again. "What steps would you like for your dance, madam?" he calls to the hag, who seems to be reevaluating the situation. "A quadrille? A black nag?" He dodges out of the way of another lobbed handful of mud. "Really, you'll have to be more clear if you want something specific!"

The hag grows impatient with his dodging - which is for the best, as his thigh is _burning_ , and he really doesn't like how much blood is currently soaking his trousers, unable to clot while he's prancing around like a half-baked idiot with a sword - and charges in at him again. Jaskier doesn't _entirely_ rely on instinct and muscle memory as he sidesteps the charge and brings his sword up to slice through its gut, but the speed and precision of the move are definitely not based on any knowledge he has consciously.

The hag falls to the ground, wounded but not quite dead. Not ideal, but Jaskier can manage well enough, probably. It's somehow more distasteful to drive his sword into the hag's back and through its heart than it was to decapitate a drowner. Maybe the fact that he has time to actively _choose_ to do it, rather than simply reacting in the heat of battle. Once he can only hear the slowly returning sounds of the forest and fields around him, he finally pulls out the sword and lets himself slump to the ground.

He needs to gather proof of the kills.

He needs to bind his leg up so he can get back to town where they will hopefully let him bathe and properly patch himself up before he moves on.

He needs to _get up_.

"Was it ever this hard for you, Geralt?" Jaskier asks quietly to the muddy banks of the river, looking out across the water to the wheat fields beyond. "Did you ever finish a fight and just want to sit down and never get back up again?"

He can't really imagine Geralt ever feeling that way.

"No, I suppose not," he murmurs with a wan smile. "You wouldn't need to. A witcher's drive and purpose is the Path, right? There's always another monster, always another contract, until you get slow and die." Jaskier's breath catches in his chest, and he lets out a tiny hysterical laugh even as tears slip down his cheeks.

Maybe it's just the adrenaline crash from the battle. Maybe it's the reality of what his life is now finally sinking in. Maybe it's just the bone-deep loneliness he feels in a world that isn't meant for him anymore, that maybe never _was_ meant for him and he'd stolen a flickering moment of belonging for those years of humanity that he had at Geralt's side.

Whatever it is doesn't matter in the end, and he sits and cries himself dry until the sun sets.

* * *

Derrik appears more surprised to see Jaskier limping and covered in mud and ichor than he is to see him back so late on such an ostensibly simple contract.

"Witcher!" he exclaims, the (much rowdier now that the sun's set) tavern falling silent. "I ... thought you'd left, to be honest," he says cautiously. "Wouldn'ta thought a drowner'd give you that much trouble?"

" _Three_ drowners," Jaskier says wearily. "And a water hag. Heads are outside, didn't want to make too much of a mess." His thigh aches and stings as he stands just inside the doorway, but the sensation is oddly dulled. Not numb, but almost like the pain has to pass through a barrier before it gets to him, and leaves some of itself behind in the process.

Mostly he just wants a bath and a bed.

"We don't have enough to pay for three and a _hag_ ," he hears one of the tavern-goers whisper to his neighbor, and Jaskier sighs.

"Look," he tells Derrik, who is also starting to look a little nervous as he fidgets with the purse on his belt. "If there's a bath and a bed somewhere in town, I'll take what you had put aside for the one drowner and we'll call it even. Maybe some supper, if there's any to spare."

The energy in the room lightens, and over the smell of stale ale and drowner and hag and his own blood, Jaskier catches a hint of something bright and crisp, like a ripe apple, coming from the tavernkeeper.

"You'd do that for us, master witcher?" he asks, as if he can't quite believe what Jaskier's said.

"I'm tired, and injured, and _disgusting_ ," Jaskier answers with a shrug. "I'm sick of cold baths and sleeping in the dirt. I'm a witcher, not a golem, I still need comfort sometimes."

It's more akin to the sort of thing he could get away with as a bard, perhaps, and it could go down poorly, but the villagers are apparently more grateful than they are suspicious, and they all seem to accept this and start going back to their drinks and conversations. Derrik nods agreement with some sort of glint in his eye that Jaskier just doesn't have the energy to decipher.

"Sit yourself at a table, then, master witcher," Derrik says. "You can eat while we get you a hot bath and a bed sorted."

"My thanks," Jaskier murmurs, and tries to move unobtrusively towards an empty table tucked in a corner.

"Oi!" someone, a young man just into his prime by the looks of him, says as he stands, mug raised and eyes on Jaskier as he sits. Jaskier freezes, fearing that perhaps the townsfolk hadn't taken so kindly, but the youth just grins at him. "A toast to the witcher!" he calls. "For saving our arses well and true!"

"Aye!" most of the men in the room agree with various degrees of sobriety and enthusiasm, raising their mugs in his direction. Jaskier is grateful for the warm welcome, whatever reason they have for being willing to give it, and he smiles faintly in gratitude.

Right up until the youth bursts into a round of _Toss a Coin to Your Witcher_ , and every part of Jaskier's mind and body turns to ice.

He should be glad, he knows. His efforts to better the reputation of Geralt specifically and witchers in general have clearly been fruitful, have maybe even been the _cause_ for the village's willingness to treat him decently. He's glad they want to acknowledge the work he did for them, and repay him. He's glad. He is.

But inside his skull, unheard by anyone but himself, he's screaming in agony, desperately wishing for _any_ other expression of that gratitude and acknowledgement. For anything that won't remind him of the life he's lost and left, with only an aching void left in his chest where his music used to live.

He manages not to glower, though, the way Geralt would've, and thanks the girl who brings his supper. He eats mechanically, unable to taste anything but ashes as the crowd segues into a number of upbeat ballads and drinking songs, many of them his own compositions.

The bath, when he's finally led to a little room over the kitchen, is hot and soothing, though Jaskier can hardly enjoy it. He sits in the water as it cools and tries not to think about nights spent in tiny attic rooms for free in exchange for an evening's performance, or coming upstairs to find Geralt soaking in a tub that barely contained him, waiting for Jaskier to wash his hair, or stitch a wound.

The gashes on his thigh are deep, though he'd already stopped bleeding well before he reached the tavern. Witcher healing, he supposes. They need to be stitched, though, if they're not going to take forever and a day to heal fully, and Jaskier can't quite reach the higher ends, high on his thigh and curving around to the back. As he twists and attempts to reach the difficult areas first, he finds himself thinking that _this_ is probably why some of Geralt's scars had looked particularly poorly tended, in certain spots.

It makes him ache, for Geralt and for himself and for every witcher out there having to stitch themselves up as best they can at the end of the day, with no extra pair of hands offering help or comfort.

It makes him feel angry and small, to know that Geralt preferred the memory of someone else to Jaskier's own gently, freely offered love and care.

It makes him desperately lonely, to know that there's no one in the world who would offer the same to him.

He stitches the wound closed as best he can, bandages it with strips of his old spare shirt, saved for just this purpose, and all but collapses in the bed. Everything in his body, heart, and mind seems to hurt in one way or another, and Jaskier's almost certain he won't be able to sleep. But the call of sleep in a bed with a quilt, and the warmth of the kitchen hearth seeping up through the floor, proves stronger even than Jaskier's own broken parts, and he falls into its waiting arms gladly.

* * *

Not all towns and villages are as honest and generous as that nameless village was. He is careful about the contracts he takes, does his best to research as Geralt would've and then researches even more. If he thinks the threat may be underestimated, or the monster may require more skill than he can bring to a fight, he moves on. If the person offering the contract seems duplicitous or likely to shortchange him on his payment if he succeeds, he moves on.

He needs to survive, yes, but he only needs to get to Aretuza. Once he gets to Yen, he'll at least be able to rely on _her_ skill to lift the rest of the curse, so that he isn't desperately fighting to even have any idea how to get by. He'll know how to make decoctions and potions, and he'll get all the _learned_ parts of combat back, and he won't have to cross his fingers and hope for the best every time he draws his sword.

He has to get there first, but for now he can afford, as long as he's not starving, to be picky about the contracts he takes. (Frankly, after seeing a board with only a single request for a witcher to take out an arachas, possibly a whole nest, he knows he _needs_ to be picky about the contracts he takes, if he wants to survive long enough to _reach_ Aretuza.)

He thinks he's about a week out from Aretuza when he's woken from a dead sleep by ... _something_. He doesn't know what, as he sits up and scents the air almost without meaning to. While he still can't identify all the smells on the wind, he's started to be able to tell when monsters are nearby, at least. Or humans.

There's something bitter in the air, something he can't put his finger on but feels so unbelievably _familiar_ for reasons he doesn't have a chance to try to guess before there's a hand twisted in his hair and a blade at his throat.

"Knew you'd show up again someday, _buttercup_ ," a voice hisses in his ear. Jaskier knows he has instincts to defend himself. He'd been startled awake by a deer once and had been upright and reaching for a blade before he'd even fully realized he was awake. He's defended himself from humans already once.

In the face of that scent and that hissed voice and the blade at his throat, Jaskier is _frozen_.

"Um," he says, swallowing hard.

"Shut up and _listen_ ," the voice hisses, the blade pressing more firmly against Jaskier's throat. He falls obligingly silent. "I wanted to be done with you as soon as you surfaced, but Auckes says your _dog_ wanted us to ask you 'why' first, and he'll want me to bring him an _answer_ with your head." Whoever belongs to the blade and the voice and the bitter smell (overlaid by sour anger and something else he can't identify), tightens their grip on Jaskier's hair. "So this is me asking, and I won't ask twice: _Why_?"

Jaskier has _so_ many questions, and no way to ask them without risking angering the person behind him.

"Okay," he says, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible, even though he can hear it trembling slightly. "I think you've possibly mistaken me for someone I'm really _not_."

"Bull _shit_ ," the voice snarls, and yanks Jaskier's head back, baring his throat.

"Waitwaitwait!" Jaskier cries quickly, his heart ratcheting up to near-human levels. "I swear, please, let me explain!"

There's a growl, then the voice snaps, " _Quickly_ , then, traitor."

"I've been cursed," Jaskier starts, and the hand in his hair tugs sharply.

"I know _that_ much, not that it much matters now it's broken."

"It isn't, though," Jaskier continues. "There were two parts to it. The mage who helped me, he only broke half of it. I don't _remember_ anything from before."

The voice doesn't say anything for a long moment, then the grip on Jaskier's hair releases, and the blade pulls away. The person in question comes around from behind him; their dark hair is pulled back into a tight braid that disappears under the collar of their cloak, and a twined serpent pendant hangs around their neck.

They don't put away their dagger.

"You're not lying," they say suspiciously.

"I'm not," Jaskier confirms. "And I'm not ... sure exactly what you think I did, or why you called me a traitor, so I can't really give you any answers." He hesitates.

They watch him in the darkness, too closely to be human.

"Did we know each other?" he asks the other witcher finally. "Just ... you seem pretty pissed at whatever I'd done as a witcher that made you hate me, so I figure it probably wasn't just some rumor that got around."

They huff and shake their head.

"No good killing you like this," they grumble. "If you don't even fuckin' know what you did. Auckes'd be _that_ sodding pissed at me."

"Well, we wouldn't want to upset Auckes," Jaskier says, trying for levity, but his visitor scowls deeper.

" _You_ don't get to talk about him," they snap.

"Right," Jaskier says.

They sigh, and the dagger in their hand disappears somewhere under their cloak.

"You live tonight." They put their dagger away with great reluctance. "But you'll remember eventually. And when you do, you owe us some damned answers, and probably your head. Got it?"

"I mean, I'd prefer to _keep_ my head," Jaskier starts, and the witcher snarls. "Buuut, yes, I understand," he finishes quickly. "I'll remember that I owe you answers about ... whatever it is that I did to piss you off."

"Being a gods-damned _traitor_ ," the witcher growls under their breath, but gives a sharp nod. "I'll be back for that answer, buttercup," they say firmly. "Once you remember, I'll be back for that answer, and then for your head."

"Yeah," Jaskier chokes out, terrified of what he might learn about himself that could inspire this level of hatred. "See you then, I guess."

The witcher snorts, then turns and walks soundlessly into the woods, leaving Jaskier alone with his thoughts and uncertainties.

Jaskier doesn't sleep again.

* * *

Aretuza is shockingly easy to reach. Somehow, he'd expected a famed school for sorceresses to be ... well, inaccessible except by magic, but there's a door that he can walk up to and knock on, and an entryway he can stand in while waiting for whoever's in charge to show up to deal with the strange witcher asking after one of their graduates, and it's all overwhelmingly surreal.

Part of him wants to feel relief. _It's almost over_ , it whispers hopefully. But even if he gets Yen to help him, he knows it won't change things back to the way they were. He's a witcher now and he will be a witcher after - he just hopes he's a less confused, more useful one. Maybe it'll hurt less, the things he's lost, when he's got memories of training and the Path and everything.

He doesn't think it's likely, admittedly, but he has to hope for _something_.

He hears the click of fine heeled shoes coming steadily down the hallway the trainee sorceress (he assumes) went fleeing down, and he straightens his clothes as best he can, trying to look _somewhat_ presentable, at least. It's a hard sell, given the rough-mended state of his clothes, he knows, but he can and will do his best. If this woman is anything like Yen, that will actually matter.

"Well," the woman says when she steps into the room, "you were _not_ the witcher I would have expected."

She's a rather severe-looking woman, and Jaskier has absolutely no trouble imagining her as the terrifying overseer of a school for magically-gifted teenage girls. Yen must've given her so many headaches.

"Nor the one I would've, in your place," he says, going for a charming grin before schooling it into something that won't flash his too-sharp canines. He doesn't expect a powerful sorceress to be _frightened_ of him, of course, but it's grown to be habit. "But unfortunately Yennefer is the only sorceress I'm acquainted with well enough to trust with this matter." A matter which, however formidable this woman may be, he is _not_ going to be sharing with her.

"I completely understand," she says, and Jaskier wonders briefly if she does. It's not like he'd _know_ if she were reading his mind, probably. "Unfortunately, witcher, you have made the journey here in vain. Yennefer is not here."

Jaskier's heart feels like it drops through the floor and into the depths of the earth.

"She's not," he rasps. "Ah. Can ... you send her a message for me, then?"

"We cannot," the sorceress says. "We've no notion of where she is, and all attempts to reach her have failed. I rather think she does not wish to be found, and she is quite adept at that when it suits her."

Jaskier nods mutely, every thought in his head uncharacteristically still and silent.

"I am sorry you came all this way for nothing," the sorceress says, not unkindly but with no real warmth. "I wish you luck in resolving the matter in some other way." A pause, as if she's waiting to see if Jaskier will ask for anything else, then she turns to retreat back into the heart of her domain. "Very well. I'm sure you can see yourself out."

"Of course," Jaskier manages, and obligingly turns and does so.

The heavy door thuds behind him with a sort of finality that he wishes would've stayed in poetry. No Yen, no way to _reach_ Yen, and no backup plan for how to deal with the situation.

" _Fuck_ ," he says with feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think it was gonna be _that easy_ , did you? (:
> 
> Next up: Geralt acquires a princess and goes searching for his bard!
> 
> tumblr: [bygodstillam](http://bygodstillam.tumblr.com)  
> discord: ruffboi#9097
> 
> Please feel free to come yell at me there too, and don't forget that comments of any sort, even just a string of keysmashes or emojis, bring life and joy to your friendly neighborhood fanfic author.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to scream at me over on tumblr at [@bygodstillam](http://bygodstillam.tumblr.com). Yes it's the same as the title. No it wasn't intentional. :P
> 
> Comments are the fuel that keeps the writing train going, please let me know if you like it!


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